Launched this week with legendary jazz pianist Keith Jarrett’s “Last Solo Final Impromptu,” the Frost School of Music's new Frost Music Masters video series features award-winning faculty dissecting intricate musical conundrums and sharing tips on how to play them.
As Frost School Dean Shelton G. “Shelly” Berg notes in the first video about the famed composition Jarrett first recorded more than 30 years ago, “This song is all about improvisation. It seems so easy and it’s confoundingly difficult.”
Three other Frost School masters of jazz join Berg, himself an acclaimed Grammy-nominated jazz pianist, in the video, the first in the new series aimed at providing musicians and music lovers alike invaluable insights and performance techniques.
They include drummer Dafnis Prieto, a MacArthur Genius Fellow and Grammy-nominated assistant professor of practice of studio music and jazz; Martin Bejerano, a UM alumnus and Grammy-nominated associate professor of jazz piano; and pianist and composer Gonzalo Rubalcaba, a two-time Grammy and Latin Grammy winner and lecturer in studio music and jazz.
In addition to the Frost School’s wealth of talent, the video series, which was funded by an anonymous donor, will showcase the Frost School’s philosophy of teaching. Encapsulated in the Frost School’s motto, Build Yourself at Frost, the curricular method is built around the idea that there is no single "right way" to learn. As Berg says in introducing the series, "Part of building yourself is considering various 'right ways.' That is how we teach in the Frost School, and that is what the Frost Music Masters Series is all about."
And now, with the new series, anyone can learn from the masters, and show them what they’ve got. Those who take on Jarrett’s challenging piece using the techniques provided by the Frost masters are invited to upload a short video clip of their performance to their social media and tag the Frost School at #FrostMM.
