Peter Nero Expects Pacific Symphony ‘Blast’

Barely started on a phone interview, Peter Nero excused himself briefly to switch off several alarm clocks that had started buzzing in the background. He often naps in the afternoons, he explained, rising 90 minutes before heading to a performance, leaving time to collect himself and enjoy a good meal.

If such schedules are necessary to see the pianist-conductor through his 100 to 150 performances a year, other aspects are less regimented. Though two engagements with the Pacific Symphony were only a week away during the interview last Friday, Nero hadn’t even begun to choose the material for concerts at the Orange County Performing Arts Center tonight and Saturday.

He constantly varies his program, he said, dependent on whimsy and a few other factors. Calling from a tour stop in Madison, Wis., he said: “I have a repertoire base of about 500 pieces that I’m either prepared to play or conduct, so what I do is take into consideration the amount of rehearsal time I get, the skill of the orchestra and the last time I played in the area.”

Although this will be Nero’s first time fronting the Pacific Symphony, he said: “I’m sure it will be a blast. I haven’t worked with them as a unit, but I suspect from hearing where the players are coming from that I’ve played with many of them before” in studio work or with other organizations.

The 56-year-old musician is celebrating his 30th year in professional show business. A musical prodigy--Nero won a scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music when he was 14--the Brooklyn-born pianist began early on to experiment with the blend of classical and jazz styles that brought him to prominence.

“My interest was in both jazz and classical,” he said. “I really had no boundaries, but the teachers kind of defined them for me. In those days the attitude of the piano teachers was, ‘There is only one kind of music--classical music--and the rest of it is garbage, junk.’

“That’s the attitude that they tried to impart to me. I guess I never bought it, because on the side I just did what I wanted to do.

“When I was 17,” Nero said, “I lucked out with the best teaching I ever had, five years with Abram Chasins. He and his wife were marvelous classical musicians and didn’t know the first thing about playing pop or jazz, but they had a great respect for anybody who could. So they actually encouraged it. That was the first chance I really had to do something that was legitimized in my own mind.”

On a dare from a friend when he was 19, he went on a TV talent show, and in the space of five months he was the winner of four such programs, including Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts.

His first record, “Pianoforte,” was released in 1961. In short order he received a Grammy for his “classic-fied” version of Richard Rodgers’ “Mountain Greenery.”

Since then he has performed for several presidents, had a million-selling single in 1971 with “Summer of ‘42,” composed film scores and earned considerable respect for his keyboard interpretations of George Gershwin. For the past 11 years, he has been the music director of the Philly Pops. He also is pops music director for the Tulsa Philharmonic.

Though he is satisfied with the critical regard he now receives, Nero said his straddling musical disciplines may have prevented critics from taking him seriously sooner.

“It’s always easier to stay within a niche and be labeled, to play straight jazz and put yourself up for a vote with the jazz critics, or the same thing with the classical. When I did what I did, what I created for myself was a monster,” he said, laughing. “A no-man’s land.”

“Out of the lack of another category, I was initially called ‘pop,’ along with Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, you name it. Then when the Beatles came in ‘64, people like myself became ‘MOR,’ middle-of-the-road. And then we kept getting redefined, to ‘Easy Listening,’ and then ‘Beautiful Music.’ And the connotation there was that it was stuff you heard on an elevator, which really tickles me, because some of the things I do have 9 million notes flying by and a lot of musical ideas that have to be picked up very quickly by the the listener.”

Nero is known for bringing more than a touch of wit to his performances. This sometimes will take the form of playful musical quotes thrown into his selections. More frequent is his penchant for, he said, “doing music ‘in-the-style-of,’ with the very best example being ‘Mountain Greenery,’ which I just re-recorded after 30 years.

“It’s done in what I call pseudo-Mozart, for the simple reason that when I was given the task of recording the tune, I felt that melodically it resembled something that Mozart might have written. And that’s not meant to say that the composer stole it, or that he was even inspired by it, but that’s just the way I heard it.

“When I do that, the tune itself dictates the approach. Of course, many of the songwriters were influenced by the classical writing of Rachmaninoff, for instance, so it’s very easy to take a pop tune and do it a la Rachmaninoff, in terms of the harmonic approach.

“When you’re dealing with a composer like Andrew Lloyd Webber, he has been very outspoken about his love for opera, and you hear it in his music. Somebody made a crack to me the other day--I didn’t say it--that he should be paying Puccini a royalty. So in his music I do find that there are a lot of things that sound similar to other composers.”

A bit of musical whimsy that is likely to turn up in the Center performances is Nero’s “Phantom Phantasy,” based on themes from “Phantom of the Opera.” That number is featured on his just-released “Anything But Lonely” album, recorded with full orchestra.

In many of his appearances with orchestras, Nero performs half the show accompanied only by his bassist Mike Barnett and drummer Steve Pemberton. Along with the intimate virtues of the trio format, it allows Nero a hedge against the possibility of under-rehearsed orchestral material.

“It’s difficult to uphold high levels of musicianship in pops concerts when a lot of orchestras expect the artist to come in and do it in one 2 1/2-hour rehearsal,” he said. “As a result you really have to compromise on the charts, you’ve got to make the arrangements simple, easy to play and not too challenging. And that doesn’t sit well with everybody.

“Now the classical series get four rehearsals, sometimes five, and very often on pieces they’ve played 100 times. The musicians themselves come to me and say, ‘This is backwards. We know all the Beethoven symphonies, we’ve been playing them for 50 years.’

“But a conductor comes in here from Europe, and they give him four rehearsals. And frankly they’re bored to tears. Then I, or somebody else, comes in with a book where the notes are flying by, and they’ve got to get it all done in the first shot.”

(Nero said he expected to use the orchestra throughout the Center performances, based on what he had heard about them and a relatively generous 3 1/2-hour rehearsal time.)

Nero said he never aims for less than excellence. “What I try to convey to audiences, I try to make them feel something, and what that is is difficult to say, because everybody seems to get a different reaction. And I do try to impart quality.

“One thing I try to make audiences understand is that what they’re about to hear is everybody giving 200% for their art, regardless of whether it’s going to mean bucks or not.”

Peter Nero will be joined by the Pacific Symphony in concerts tonight and Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tickets: $14 to $43. Information: (714) 556-2787.