Ahmad Jamal

[Piannaman@aol.com]

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Tom,

I was going through my Pat Metheny CD archives, and I noticed that you've 
been tuning Lyle Mays' piano for quite some time now...at least back to "First 
Circle," which came out in 1984!  I've always enjoyed the sound of his piano and 
his playing, and it's very cool that you've gotten credit in the liner notes!

As far as jazz recordings from the 50s and 60s, I've been listening to a 
couple of Bill Evans recordings from that era, and the pianos sound almost 
unbearably bad.  It's good to see that today's jazz artists are a bit more 
discriminating, that they're gracious about what they ask for and how to ask for it, and 
that they recognize the technician as an artist--even if the audiences 
generally don't.

Thanks for the story about Ahmad Jamal, Richard.  Sounds like a good 
experience!  He's a great player.

Dave Stahl

In a message dated 5/24/03 11:46:50 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
tsheehan@nyc.rr.com writes:


> As the tuner who tuned and voiced this year's Grammy award-winning Best
> Contemporary Jazz Album by a Group - Pat Metheny Group's "Thinking of
> Now," - it makes the work go more efficiently when the pianist, in this case
> Lyle Mays, is trusting enough to ask me to just get the piano "right" for
> him. I think that it's a matter of rapport: with and confidence in the
> technician. As Herbie Hancock once said to me, "Tom, I always play better
> when you tune the piano for me." I think that the specific and general sense
> of that statement is true. I am continually appalled by the lack of good,
> solid tuning in jazz piano recordings from the 50s and 60s. E.g., "Time Out"
> by the Dave Brubeck Quartet swings like crazy, but there's one ballad -
> "Strange Meadowlark" - that's so clearly out of tune that it's enough to
> almost make your toes curl.
> 
> Anyway, I'm sure that you're keeping up the world-class standard that these
> artists deserve!
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Tom Sheehan, RPT
> NYC Chapter



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