Billy Childs--Playing With the Changes

Spend some time with Billy Childs and it becomes clear where the explosive energy in his music comes from. “I’m just a tense person,” the 31-year-old pianist/composer said recently in his Silverlake apartment. “How can you not be, living in Los Angeles? The edge of here (Los Angeles) comes over in your music. A fast song is going to have as much edge in it as possible, even if it offends people. I want the music to swoosh, swoosh (gesturing wildly with his arms) when I want it to do that.”

But there’s also a calmer side to the pianist who has played with such notables as J. J. Johnson, Freddie Hubbard and Branford Marsalis. “I love and have feelings and I hope it comes across in the music,” he said. “When I solo, I try to be melodic, play a singing melody or an edgy melody that tells some sort of story. What communicates most is melody. I don’t know that people are interested, unless they’re trained, in the harmonic innovations of the tune. They have to be able to make sense of it, melodically.”

Childs, who leads his trio tonight at the Vine St. Bar & Grill, said that the bond between audience and musician is very important. “I want people to be moved. I want them to come out different. I read (George Orwell’s) ‘1984’ and came out of the house, saying, ‘I’ve got to do something about the world.’ And I want people to have that kind of feeling after they hear me, saying, ‘I’ve got to see him again,’ or ‘I have to start practicing piano again,’ or ‘I have to go buy some jazz records.’ I guess what I’m about musically is to be excellent on the piano, and, as a symbol of excellence, make somebody else feel good about their situation.”

The musician has just released his first major label solo LP--”Take for Example This . . . “ (Windham, Hill Jazz)--a quartet date he deemed it necessary to record only on acoustic piano. “To be seriously regarded as a jazz musician, to be known as a player, you have to be known as an acoustic piano player first,” he said. “I want it to be known in the jazz world that I can play jazz piano well.”

The LP, like his live dates, is “orchestrated and organized.” “I like orchestration in every aspect of music, whether it be for a big orchestra or a small group. I like everybody to be involved, melodically and harmonically. It makes the music sing more, and to me, it makes more sense, when everybody is doing what is necessary to enhance the song. It gives the music a lift.”

Childs feels that if you know chord changes--the harmonic chain that tunes are built on--then there are a lot of ways to go when playing a jazz solo. “Sometimes, I like to abandon the changes,” he said. “That gives me more melodic freedom. If I work with the changes, I have to create the melody from the given notes. I want to be able to do that, too. That’s what bop is about. If you perfected bop, which is the hardest thing in music, or at least can play within the confines of the changes, then you have license to go outside the changes, abandon them and create new melodies.”

Childs likes living in Los Angeles, even if it is tough on his reputation. “A lot of musicians, particularly those from New York, think there’s nothing happening here,” he said. “But there are a lot of good musicians here. Still, it’s like a compliment, ‘You play like a New York cat.’ But I don’t care where you’re from, it depends on how good you are, whether you can play or not. You don’t have to be from New York to play good jazz.”

In a roundabout way, Childs can thank keyboardist Keith Emerson (of rock band Emerson, Lake and Palmer) for his burgeoning career. In 1971, while a student at the Midland private school above Santa Barbara, Childs--who had taken a few piano lessons at age 6 but soon stopped--heard an ELP record that stunned him. “I heard this organ playing some bad stuff,” he recalled, “and I said, ‘I’ve got to play piano.’ So I’d go off to the piano in the mess hall and try to copy what I heard. It helped develop my ear.”

After theory studies at USC’s Community School and Hamilton High School, and jazz piano studies with Herb Mickman, Childs entered USC, eventually graduating at the top of his class, with a degree in composition, in 1979. But he says his “main teachers” were Johnson and Hubbard. “They taught me how to play and finesse the music, not so much with specifics, as with feeling.”

Making music suits Childs. “It’s an honest thing for me, an honest way of making money,” he said. “I’m not trying to put anything over on anybody. They have the choice of buying my stuff, or not. I’m not hurting anybody; if anything, I’m helping. Not everybody can do it. I feel fortunate that I can.”

Childs see a bright future in his chosen art form. “I’m just consumed with music. I want to keep developing into something. I fell in love with music, and it’s an ongoing love affair. I keep finding new stuff that I want to do. The more I hear, the more I want to do.”