Hello Billy, I though you might also enjoy this solo piano album of mine which was improvised in one sitting in a continuous 40-minute session. The pieces (and the spaces between them) are as they happened during the session. As I later understood my emotional state - I was working through saying goodbye to my then-recently departed parents. It is from 2012.
Best wishes, Laszlo
— Laszlo Gardony
This is a review of Laszlo Gardony’s solo piano album from 2012 entitled “Clarity.” It is the first review I have posted in more than 10 years. I have written two complete reviews of that album and scrapped them. I believe this album is important, and beautiful, and it gets me somewhere down deep. I read through my other versions of this review, and that writing didn’t make me want to listen to the album. This music does something for me that no other album does as well. It takes work as a listener to let the music in enough to be changed by it. When I listen to this music as deeply as I am able, it can take me from mourning into the celebration of life.
I got sick with Covid 19 twice while working on this review, and the disease and its lingering effects did a number on my ability to feel. Even then, this music helped me when I was able to give it my all. I invite the reader (YOU!) to skip the review and head directly to the music or to the interview (when posted) as soon as you feel the urge to do so. Laszlo Gardony created this music improvising at his Yamaha Baby Grand piano in this office at the Berklee College of Music in one 49-minute session. He came in early to work and may have skipped breakfast to do that. The following section of this review was improvised by me while listening to the album in that same amount of time. After writing this review, I ate breakfast.
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The opening chords are plaintive and deep. This guy is searching for something. There ain’t no preaching going on. The title “Settling of a Racing Mind” (4:08) catches my attention! Damn, but couldn’t I use some of that. Man, this guy is restless. About a minute into this song, I have heard several themes worthy of a song all by itself, but he keeps searching. Sounds like there is a complete adult fairy tale here searching hard for a moral of the story. Oh man! So rich and full are these chords. Feels like the waters have been troubled a little too long, and there needs to be a some spiritual calm. This prayer ends unresolved but oh so beautiful.
“Surface Reflections” (1:53) keeps the story going in the same vein, but there are some beautiful chords of conclusion and maybe “mystic chords of memory” though quoting Lincoln here may not be quite the ticket. There is a “moral of the story” forming, but not quite.
“Looking Deeper” (4:58) admits the answers have not yet been found. The theme is not abandoned, but it is altered and less of a fairy tale now. Some sliding sideways up a ladder to find a new key changes the scenery for a moment. The fairy tale has become a Lutheran Hymn for a sec. This has become for me a broken “Mighty Fortress” until it takes the exit to a new musical plain with some nod to blue, and some sonic shifting that sounds modal to me. Then a blessed return to the aching search for a resolution that has become more real. That trill at the end wants to be a tag of truth and a sweet afterword perhaps, but it is no more capable of ending the search than an aphorism against the finality of loss.
"Working Through (Clarity)” (3:32) repeats the theme of deep-lovely-haunting search with greater complication and great big chords that seem to require all the fingers. For a second there seems to be a bridge to another way of feeling through the losses. The song resolves on home base, but not as a final statement. Not that at all.
There is a dance forming in “Finding Strength” (2:37). I went looking for the dance, and best I can feel it may be something very old like a quadrille. Chords repeat and alter but then there is a single note played for rhythm in the bass section that denotes the passage of time and development. I find myself rocking to the rhythm in my chair. Something toe-tappy is forming.
“Better Place” (11:31) begins in a tonal cloud full of wonder and not quite what I would expect to find in the Ultimate Chord Book. Time stands still in a two chord deal, until Wow! something slides again on that magical, modal, key-smashing way that happened once before. Then there is a really fine kind of Disney or Sondheim musical inspirational and sad theme. That don't last long. The search has taken on a very different tone now, "extra" notes sneak in. Not all is well with the world, but we are working on it. 1-2-3 and 1-2-3 and repeat. Maybe there is a complaint there or some discomfort. But oh there is a rhythm forming in the bass. I think we should go with that, because that rhythm seems to know where it is going. Kinda getting sweet, and I am starting to get a little antsy in my chair. Feels like it‘s about to launch into something inspirational, which hasn't been a steady diet up to this point. There is a little trill in this rhythmic blast that reminds me of Charles Mingus’ “Better Git It In Your Soul.” We are definitely headed to the dance floor. And even now, there is a five-note-down and four-note-up thing countering the flow and maybe slightly out of time. Stuff still troubles the flow, but we are definitely headed somewhere. This is serious fun, but it’s not just happy talk. Thrilling, if you really want to know. There is a little theme here that reminds me of Vince Guaraldi's perfect little boxes, like in "Cast Your Fate To The Wind," but there is more to it and it isn't so damn pat. The ending is a “fade” which is pretty sweet when done entirely on the piano.
“Opened Window (Hopeful Horizon)” (3:44) definitely needs some lyrics and a fine tenor singing something pithy and heartbreaking. This could be a great big Broadway ballad and I know it would make me cry and teach me something. I would see this musical as often as my wallet would allow. It speaks to my own broken heart just where I sit uncomfortably in the audience of life. The ending leaves the questions open. Moving stuff.
“Tempering” (1:54) has more of that “One Step Beyond” sliding into new keys and chords by breaking some rules but keeping me engaged anyway. Then there is a familiar cascade downward like a waterfall or Arvo Pärt’s “Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten.” That downward spiral tips the hand of this emerging suite of songs as a most funereal thing. Nevertheless, Laszlo Gardony reports that he was not consciously aware of any such extraneous thought at the time he was playing it. (An “interview” assembled from text will immediately follow this review.)
Billy: What did you feel when you were playing that music? Obviously, the best description of what you were feeling is the music itself. (I believe music is the language of emotion expressed through time.) But do you remember any extraneous thoughts or details that would add to an understanding of your state of mind while creating this music?
Laszlo Gardony: No. I was one with each note. I was each note.
The beginning of “Resilient Joy” (10:50) reminds me of the fife and drum trio playing down the road putting a feather in their cap and calling it macaroni. Then it slides right into a sassy little theme that has some big chords backing it up. This seems so familiar. Now I know it is not intentional but I definitely hear some Mungo Jerry in here! At 6:45 to 7:00 this is absolutely “In the Summertime when the weather is high, you can reach right up and touch the sky.” (Ray Dorset 1970 — "Mungo Jerry” is the name of the band) Yousa! That's skiffle, if my Wikipedia has it right. How the hell? Somehow it fits and fits tight. We are clearly dancing now! This ain't no ancient dance, but a full tilt celebration. All the themes seem come to accept this resolution in "Resilient Joy." It is a damn barn burner as they used to say. Everybody get up, form and line and join in! The mourning is clearly over, because this is time to celebrate the life well lived, and your life, and his life, and my life and all life. DANCE! There it is! Mungo Jerry! I definitely didn't see that coming. Ain't nobody watching, so everybody dance! Can I let go of all my own losses and let this happen? Of course I can! Who can resist this much sass and looks like everybody is joining in so I celebrate too, and that allows me to let go of a couple suicides in my family and the death of both parents. Sorry, but that’s my stuff. You let go of whatever you got. Point is, we are dancing to the celebrations of life with an attitude! Laszlo Gardony later described it as the equivalent of a New Orleans second-line funeral march.
It was not something I judged; I just had a very strong inclination to stay true to, and focus on every moment as it happened. I never became result-oriented throughout the process; didn't think about it at all. I felt the inspiration, the inevitability of the music and I went with it and was grateful for it. Afterwards, the sense that the grief lifted and was replaced by peace was unexpected and filled me with gratitude. That is when I truly realized what I went through, not until then. It seems to me that healing oneself from grief can't be forced, or done through step-by-step thinking, and it wasn't done that way here.
Now that I re-listened to "Resilient Joy" I can hear the Mungo Jerry song being quoted too 😊
— Laszlo Gardony
“Resolution (Perfect Place)” (3:56) is that piano flourish one might expect after hours on an upright piano in an empty room at the end of the night. One might ask the player when he is finished, "Why don't you play that in the concert?” He mostly like will just smile, but if he answered I imagine he would say, “It’s personal.” For the first time I hear some blue notes in the mix. Once again, add some lyrics and this one would break hearts and sell product, but we are privileged to hear it. It’s the kind of thing you don’t applaud for right away, but let it sit silent in the air a minute. Then standing O.
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Now here is the part that actually makes me cry. Laszlo Gardony says that he realized sometime after playing the last note that he had been processing his way through the recent loss of both his mother and his father back in Hungary. When he finished improvising this music, the dark cloud of mourning had passed from him, and he felt a sense of resolution. The kicker is this that gets to me. His first student of the day arrived at his 15 minutes later and he proudly told me in a text, that he put everything away and gave his complete attention to his student. Why does that make me tear up? I think the quality that makes Laszlo Gardony a “monster" of a musician to his students and to me is that he is the most decent person I have ever met. That honesty is always present in his music because it is always present in this man.
It was actually in the morning, before my first student arrived that day. I felt that the notes I was about to play would very strongly lead to other notes and that they came from deep emotions. It was inevitable music that needed to come out. So I quickly turned on the recorder. I don't think I had breakfast. Maybe 15 minutes after finishing the improvisations, my teaching day started. I was 100 percent there for my first student, helping him or her (I don't remember) with what she/he needed, not thinking of myself anymore.
— Laszlo Gardony
Why is this album necessary right now? Because we all have white crosses on the side of the road. At 67, death and something like it happens again and again to me. Who among us isn’t processing loss these days? This good and decent man (and master musician) was unconsciously and successfully working through the loss of both of his parents. When I listen very carefully and let this music get to me, I go through that process with him. I experience what it would be like to go through feelings of loss and to release my pain and suffering and find in myself a celebration of life. Laszlo Gardony’s process of grieving is much saner than my own, and after going through this process with him, I am less bitter and I am able to let go of some of the losses, disappointment, insult, and pain. That’s what makes this album important.
Email: billymwb@gmail.com
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