Home for U. S.-Born Jazzman Walter Norris Is Where the Piano Is

Jazz pianist Walter Norris approaches his instrument with the rapt attention of a child at play.

“I want to play every day and every night, and develop,” said Norris, 61, who was born in Little Rock, Ark., and who has lived in Berlin since 1977. “I try to do that, though not as much as I used to.”

Norris, who works at several venues in Los Angeles--on Friday, he’s at the Jazz Bakery in Culver City--has had several periods when he practically lived at the piano. One was from 1963 to 1970 in New York, when he practiced 12 hours a day, then went to work as musical director at the Playboy Club. Another was in Los Angeles, where he lived from 1953 to 1960 and where he says his artistry as a jazzman took giant steps.

“Los Angeles was paradise. It was lovely,” Norris said. “What I got here was playing day and night. This you cannot beat. It was the ultimate of my education.”

In Los Angeles, Norris played or recorded with Ornette Coleman, Teddy Edwards, Zoot Sims, Jack Sheldon and countless others. His recollection of an average weekend during those halcyon days:

“Friday afternoon might start with a jam session, say at 3 p.m., and then we’d go to a job, where if you weren’t working, you’d sit in. Then after the job, you’d go to someone’s apartment, play until the next morning, then go to a bar, ask the bartender if it was OK to play, stay there till noon, then go to another jam session, and so on.”

It’s this sort of involvement that allows an artist to find out what he or she is all about, Norris said.

“If you play all the time and keep practicing, your style grows,” he said. “You’ll have your own way, so to speak. You work at it, and it grows. You don’t know into exactly what, but it will be you.”

What about the idea that jazz musicians are supposed to enter the performance realm with a style and conception intact?

“That could go better with designing automobiles,” he said. “But for music, it should be that your style grows from practice and training, and that way you find another bag, another groove, another level of playing.”

Norris coaxes a throbbing, regal sound from an acoustic piano and draws on such disparate sources as Charlie Parker and Bela Bartok for his improvisations on standard tunes and originals. He has played and recorded with everyone from the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra and saxophonist Joe Henderson to trumpeter Chet Baker; his most recent recording is “Love Every Moment” on Concord Jazz Records. He notes that practicing and performing go hand-in-hand in his evolution as a musician.

“I need the audience. It brings something out of me,” he said. “I concentrate on what I’m playing, and I get the mental concentration from the audience, which is energy, the concentrated energy of their thinking. Like in a place like the Jazz Bakery, where there is a small audience in a good atmosphere, that audience can give you a great energy. You may say this is not scientific, but it’s pure physics to me.”

Norris believes that this form of communication between audience and artist is a spiritual experience. “Music has something that the other arts don’t have,” he said. “It’s communication without words. There’s no language, only sound, and why is it that this sound reaches so many people around the world, and they seem to get something from it?”

Ruth Price, who runs the Jazz Bakery and has presented Norris on several occasions, said: “He’s a most generous person, one of those guys where the integrity shines through. Nothing he does is for show. Everything is what he most deeply feels at the moment. Listening to him is rather thrilling. You feel like you’re right inside of the process.”

In Berlin, Norris, a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, teaches both classical regimen and jazz improvisation at the Hochschule der Kunste-Berlin, the city’s premier conservatory.

Norris said living in Europe doesn’t make him yearn for his native land. “I’m not the homesick type of person,” he said. “I found out that home is wherever I can sit down at a piano.”

Walter Norris plays solo at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Jazz Bakery, 3221 Hutchison Ave., Culver City. $15, refreshments included. (310) 271-9039. He performs solo at 9 p.m. July 23 and 24 at the Club Brasserie, Bel Age Hotel, 1020 N. San Vicente Blvd., West Hollywood. No cover, two-drink minimum. (310) 854-1111. At 9 p.m. July 25, he leads a trio at the Catalina Bar & Grill, 1640 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood. $12 cover, two-drink minimum. (213) 466-2210.