One Musician’s Forte
It has been said that music is the universal language that crosses time and space. It is a means of nonverbal communication between a performer and an audience. Pianist, Aleksander Courtney, has proven that he knows how to communicate.
A child prodigy, Aleksander remembers playing the piano in his grandmother’s parlor as early as the age of two. When asked about what led him to become a musician, he replies, “I didn’t choose music—it chose me.” He refers to the great Franz Liszt who said, “My piano is to me, my self, my speech, my life.”
Aleksander began his formal training at age six, eventually studying the works of the great classical composers. After completing his education, he began playing the classics in hotel lounges and restaurants where he quickly realized that he could appeal to a broader audience by playing popular music instead. “My many years of formal training in classical piano music provided the technical foundation on which I rely to this day. Fortunately, I was also blessed with a natural ability for improvisation. This talent certainly helps a great deal when I forget to take my sheet music along with me!”
One of the most difficult challenges a solo musician faces while performing is the task of carrying both the melody and counterpoint by himself. Aleksander rises to the challenge. He attributes this ability to his flair for improvisation and many years of listening to the great pop piano masters such as Roger Williams. “My experience as a solo performer has given me the freedom to play exactly what I am feeling at the moment. It gives me the opportunity to add measures and alter the tempo and time signatures, thereby entirely changing the original intended texture of the song. Although I do perform on occasion with other musicians, when playing alone, I am not tied to a metronomic pace.”
While commanding a vast repertoire that ranges from Tchaikovsky to Cole Porter to Jobim, Aleksander has been most acclaimed for his stylings of great movie themes that are reminiscent of the renowned piano duo, Ferrante & Teicher. Here he exhibits his many pyrotechnical flourishes for which he is known. In the midst of double-handed arpeggios, chromatics and flying descending thirds, he never loses the melody, which passes seamlessly between the right and left hands. “It’s more or less like playing the game of Twister!” he explains. “God gave us 88 keys—not just those few in the middle.”
His arranging style, which shows the influence of both the romantic and contemporary composers, generally opens with a very subtle presentation of the main theme. It then builds to a soaring restatement of the melody, complete with his many signature trademarks. Often times, the piece will end much as it did in the beginning—with a quiet, pensive melody line and understated, unpretentious accompaniment. This proven formula is clearly evident in his renditions of songs such as James Horner’s, My Heart Will Go On from the motion picture, “Titanic” and Amanda McBroom’s, The Rose, from the movie by the same name. One could say that his arrangements are complete complex orchestrations in and of themselves.
Aleksander knows how to find the pivotal center of a song and expound on it. He has the rare ability to transform a song into an emotional and very personal expression. “I have always admired Sarah Vaughan’s delivery and phrasing and tried to play as though I were a dramatic vocalist—passionately, lyrically, and patiently.” He frequently displays his appreciation of space—long periods of silence between notes—to create a certain tension. He explains, “Beautiful music, like a fine wine, requires space to breathe.” Aleksander gives an ethereal, slightly new-age treatment to his versions of Dave Grusin’s theme from the movie, On Golden Pond and Billy Strayhorn’s tragic, Lush Life.
When performing with a band, he displays a more playful side of himself with popular rhythmic standards such as The Girl from Ipanema, The Pink Panther, Tea for Two Cha-Cha, and Puttin’ On the Ritz. Two of his most requested up-tempo pieces are Maniac and Manhattan Skyline. When performing these dance tunes with rhythm tracks, Aleksander displays his ‘disco’ side and proves that he can hold his own with the best of them.
Although he is not what one would call a ‘jazz pianist’ in the traditional and rhythmic sense, he uses a broad array of jazz-oriented block chords and techniques in his playing. At times one can hear these influences in his intentional use of dissonance and cluster chords against a legato backdrop of ascending and descending broken chords. The merging of Bill Evans’ voicing with Aleksander’s rubato can be heard in his haunting version of What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?
When asked about which modern composers have influenced him the most, he responds with the names of: Johnny Mandel, Michel Legrand, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rogers, and Frederick Loewe. He refers to the compositions of one of his favorites: “When choosing new material, I look for a strong melody line, complex harmonics, and possible modulations. Some compositions, like those by David Foster, just can’t be improved upon. In my own way I try to capture the essence of the original recording with all its subtle nuances.”
Aleksander’s version of I Left My Heart in San Francisco is a salute to an era gone by. It is unusual in that he carries the melody in the far reaches of the bass register with his left hand while providing counterpoint accompaniment with his right. This demonstration of his strong left hand, quite unusual for pianists, and uncluttered delivery leave audiences in suspense—waiting and wondering when he will deliver the next chord—and the next performance.
- Allan Weberg, Music Educator