Consummate Music Man Dick Hyman to Return to His Roots as Jazz Pianist

Trying to define Dick Hyman’s role in music is like snaring a butterfly in mid-flight. He has flitted elusively among ventures as pianist, organist, composer, arranger, conductor, producer, in the worlds of jazz, classical, pop, movie music and ballet.

Monday and Tuesday at Le Cafe in Sherman Oaks, he will be heard in the role in which he made his debut, in 1948, as solo jazz pianist in a Harlem bar.

To some he may be best known for his association with Woody Allen. “It began,” he recalls, “when I was a sideman on ‘Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex.’ Then I played piano on ‘Stardust Memories,’ and soon after, he called me to write the scores for ‘Zelig’ and ‘The Purple Rose of Cairo.’ I contributed a bit, playing or writing, to ‘Broadway Danny Rose,’ ‘Radio Days’ and ‘Hannah and Her Sisters.’ ” But Hyman has earned credits for such non-Allen films as “Moonstruck,” with Cher, “Scott Joplin, King of Ragtime,” with Billy Dee Williams, and “The Lemon Sisters,” with Diane Keaton.

Now nearing 66 and looking more professorial than hip, Hyman in fact can bring a wry humor to his music, along with an encyclopedic knowledge of jazz history. Among his more than 100 albums are entire tributes to the work of Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson, Fats Waller and Eubie Blake. His near-limitless technique and sharp ear for the nuances of those pioneers once resulted in an astonishing album that found him playing the same song, “A Child Is Born,” in the styles of a dozen pianists--including the one man most pianists find inimitable, Art Tatum. (As a young man, Hyman was tendered the ultimate compliment when Tatum, in a radio interview, singled him out as a “young fellow you ought to watch.”)

During his chameleonic life, the New York-born Hyman has toured Europe with Benny Goodman, had a top-of-the-chart pop hit with a deliberately corny piano record of “Mack the Knife,” worked as a staff musician at NBC, put in four years as Arthur Godfrey’s musical director, pioneered in electronic (since the 1960s he’s taped albums on synthesizers and electric and pipe organs), and in 1975 took a repertory company on a tour of the Soviet Union. “We played the music of Louis Armstrong, who never went to Russia; I arranged some of his recorded solos for the orchestra. The audiences knew a lot of the music from Louis’ records and thoroughly enjoyed hearing it re-created.”

Predictably, the awards began coming his way--an Emmy for his score for “Sunshine’s on the Way,” a daytime drama; another for musical direction of a PBS special about ragtime pioneer Eubie Blake. But Hyman, who likes nothing more than to hopscotch among idioms, soon afterward composed and performed the score for the Cleveland Ballet’s “Piano Man” and for Twyla Tharp’s “The Bum’s Rush” with the American Ballet Theatre.

This summer, for the ninth year, Hyman will act as artistic director for an acclaimed series of concerts at New York’s 92nd Street Y. These events give him an opportunity to present the talents of his favorite artists as well as enabling him, with his matchless blend of technical, intellectual and emotional capabilities, to display his own unique eclecticism.

Hyman takes special pleasure in joining forces with fellow pianists whom he respects. Not long ago, he and Barbara Carroll, the elegant New York pianist, were both booked to play at a tribute to singer/pianist Bobby Short at St. Peter’s Church in New York. “Dick said to me, ‘Why don’t we get together and play ‘Tonk’?” Carroll recalls. (“Tonk” is a piano duet composed and performed many years ago by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.) “I told him it was an impossibly difficult piece and I could never do it, but he talked me into it and we were a big hit. Dick is truly the most comprehensive pianist I’ve ever known--just playing scales he can sound like four piano players.”

Fellow pianist Roger Kellaway says: “I used to think I was eclectic until I heard Dick Hyman and realized how many things he can do well. He is one of the most consummate musicians I know.”

Recently, Hyman had an unprecedented 12 albums released or reissued. One, “Dick Hyman Plays Duke Ellington,” was recorded in a computer disc session for the Yamaha Disclavier, an electronic player piano, but the recording is also out on a Reference CD. As arranger he’s represented by a soundtrack album of “A League of Their Own,” on which he backed Art Garfunkel; as pianist and arranger he is featured on “Summit Reunion,” with a traditional jazz group, and on a “Tribute to Chicago Jazz.” And that’s not counting the original songs for the late Maxine Sullivan on “Sullivan, Shakespeare and Hyman,” and duet CDs with Kellaway and Derek Smith.

Somehow along the way he has found time to write a book. “Dick Hyman, Piano Pro,” due out soon, is a delightful mix of witty autobiography and musical analysis, reproducing some of his original compositions.

After the two nights at Le Cafe, Hyman and his wife, Julia, will leave on a trip that is, he says, “absolutely as much pleasure as business. I’ll be the sole performer on one week of a world cruise aboard the S.S. Rotterdam, from Bali to Hong Kong.”

“Of all the thousands of things you’ve done,” I ask him, “which accomplishment makes you most proud?”

Hyman’s reply is a masterpiece of modest understatement. “I think,” he says, “I’m beginning to learn how to play solo piano.”

Dick Hyman plays at 9 and 11 p.m. Monday and Tuesday at Le Cafe, 14633 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks. $12 cover plus two-drink minimum. Call (818) 986-2662.