Ran Blake
b. 20 April 1935, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA. Growing up in Springfield and later in Suffield, Connecticut, Blake began piano lessons at the age of four but was largely self-taught. A film buff from childhood, his interest in soundtracks led him to an appreciation of 20th-century European composers such as Bartok, Debussy and Prokofiev. A simultaneous love of gospel music was sparked by the records of Mahalia Jackson and, particularly, by his exposure to the choir at the local Church of God in Christ in Hartford, Connecticut. Blake studied at Bard College from 1956-1960, devising his own jazz course there, and also began to work with singer Jeanne Lee—they recorded together in 1961 and toured Europe in 1963. Studies with Gunther Schuller, then a leading proponent of Third Stream Music, gave Blake the confidence to pursue his personal synthesis of African-American, European classical and various ethnic folk musics. When Schuller became President of Boston's New England Conservatory of Music in 1967, Blake went to work there too and in 1973 was made Chairperson of the Third Stream Department, where he has since remained. Although many of his recordings are solo, he has also worked with singers such as Lee, Chris Connor and Eleni Odoni, and saxophonists Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy, Houston Person and Ricky Ford, whom Blake ‘discovered’ playing in Boston at the age of 16. Other notable projects include his work with the New England Conservatory Symphony Orchestra (on PORTFOLIO OF DOKTOR MABUSE) and his appearance as featured guest artist on Franz Koglmann's 1989 ORTE DER GEOMETRIE. Typical Blakean characteristics, usually evident in his music in some guise, include his anti-racism and radical social perspectives, his abiding love of spirituals and his continuing fascination with film and its relationship to music ( FILM NOIRand VERTIGO). His utterly individual piano style is like a distillation of Thelonious Monk and Erik Satie: very terse, very quiet and capable of both acute dissonance and delicate romanticism—his phrases often resemble shards or beads of sound that float and trickle across great chasms of silence. A recent release, THAT CERTAIN FEELING, features the tunes of George Gershwinand is the second of a planned series of homages that also includes DUKE DREAMS (dedicated to Duke Ellingtonand Billy Strayhorn) and projected tributes to Monk and Charles Mingus.