14 minute read
Kai Spatzier: Amsterdam-bound jazz pianist
from LACES Sole 23-24
by LACES UNTIED
Europe-bound jazz prodigy takes the international stage. Mentor to LACES pianists, student to master professors. A dive into his history, his philosophy, and the meaning of musical creation.
Story by Taizo Nakayama
I. INTRODUCTION
Dedication to the craft.
Senior jazz pianist Kai Spatzier has cemented a storied musical legacy at LACES. His achievements range from playing with the LAUSD All-City Band at the Hollywood Bowl to taking home the Soundtrap Southern California Beat Battle’s grand prize.
“You can tell that he’s done his research,” said Mr. Leroy Lubin, who has mentored Spatzier for four years as the LACES Jazz Band director. As an accomplished trumpet player himself, Lubin has performed at several high-profile events including the 93rd Academy Awards ceremony and the Billboard Music awards. “He’s listened to a lot of different genres and older generations of jazz musicians. He’s quoting them—not just regurgitating what they play, but really infusing himself into it and being creative.”
Spatzier has indeed done his research — asking his professional musician teacher, rummaging through CDs, or using the “shuffle” feature on Spotify for new discoveries. His eyes shine as he rattles off the oldschool artists he’s inspired by: Bill Evans for his “horizontal development and chordal expansion,” Keith Jarrett for his “motivic playing,” Brad Mehldau for “being true to what he plays.”
With his ample jazz experience and musical knowledge, Spatzier has established himself as a foundational facet of the LACES Jazz Band.
“They’re looking to him as a leader, especially now he’s in his senior year,” Lubin said. “They’re looking to his cues on the solo section — how he wants to format things, being creative on vamps (recurring patterns in jazz) and how they want to start a tune, finish a tune.”
Professional drummer Izaak Weatherwax was impressed with Spatzier’s musical proficiency when he began assisting Lubin with the LACES Jazz Band this year. He also leads the Izaak Weatherwax quartet and performs around Los Angeles.
“He has gotten some serious time under the piano, practicing really important foundational work,” Weatherwax recalled his initial impression of Spatzier. “He’s worked out all the scales, he pays attention to the harmonic structure of a tune, knows how to navigate through changes and play different voicings. It shows a lot of commitment to learning the music and learning it with utmost sincerity.”
II. EARLY DEVELOPMENT
Musical promise.
“As a child, he was this tiny little creature obsessed with music,” said Aga Spatzier, the pianist’s mother. “There’s plenty of pictures where Marcin’s playing and he’s there listening. Pounding on the guitar, doing all sorts of beats on his own. Joy, joy, joy, to a point where in his daycare, we provided little ukuleles for this whole group — (Marcin: “And a guitar!”) — and a guitar because Kai brought a whole musical piece with Marcin into the daycare.”
His father, Marcin Spatzier, immigrated to the United States from Poland in 1992 with the dream of making a living as a jazz musician. He said he initially didn’t expect his son to get into jazz.
“For the longest time, music had to have drums and guitar and vocals for him,” Marcin said about young Spatzier’s music preferences. “He just wouldn’t listen to anything instrumental — I tried, and he was screaming, ‘Oh, no drums, and guitar and vocal!’ And I figured, okay, well, he’ll never listen to jazz! (Laughs) It’s just not in the cards.”
Marcin recalled his surprise at Spatzier’s reaction to songs he played on car rides.
“By the time the second chorus came on, he already knew it,” Marcin said. “So on the first listening on the chorus, he was able to memorize the melody. That’s pretty rare.”
Recognizing Spatzier’s musical potential, Marcin and Aga enrolled him with a local classical piano teacher when he was eight years old. However, Spatzier began to harbor feelings of resentment towards practicing after several years on the piano.
“I was a fifth grader and I was like, ‘I want to do anything else than spend 30 minutes a day sitting with this instrument that I suck at,’” said Spatzier. “That constant repetition of mistakes really ate away at me.”
Struggling with his stagnating musical improvement, Spatzier stumbled upon jazz when he witnessed a surprise jazz performance at a classical piano recital he performed in.
“I asked my dad, ‘Where’s their music [sheets]? How are they doing that?’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, they’re improvising.’ ‘What? What is improvising? That’s crazy.’ I wanted to do that. That was the start of it — my initial curiosity led me in.”
I realized that jazz is so much more creative. I find more joy in creating music. That’s really spontaneous, you know? Anything can happen at any moment.
With encouragement from Marcin, Spatzier enrolled in a five-week jazz workshop at Crossroads School after his 5th-grade culmination.
“I picked him up on the last day — he got in the car and said, ‘I want to come back and play jazz,’” Marcin recalled.
Spatzier enrolled at the Colburn School Conservatory of Music the following fall, where he began to pursue an intensive jazz education in an ensemble setting. He also started lessons with a local jazz musician, Stuart Elster.
“My initial impression [of jazz] was, ‘Aw, I have no idea what I’m doing. Jazz is so hard!’” Spatzier said, laughing. “It’s literally like learning another language. When you start playing, you learn some chords. And then someone tells you to take a solo. ‘Well — where do I even start? What notes do I play? How do I know what’s right?’ You keep second-guessing yourself.”
However, Spatzier said the fundamental nature of jazz appealed to him as he dug deeper.
“I realized that jazz is so much more creative,” he said. “I find more joy in creating music. That’s really spontaneous, you know? Anything can happen at any moment. And I find that a lot more enjoyable to play than classical.”
III. SPONTANEITY IN CONTEXT
There are no wrong notes in jazz.
Spatzier currently learns under professional pianist Vardan Ovsepian. Ovsepian’s teaching history includes courses at the Beijing Contemporary Music Academy, the Berklee School of Music, and currently the California Institute of Arts in Los Angeles. Spatzier cited Ovsepian as one of his biggest inspirations.
“The only reason I'm as experimental, modern, technically proficient, or anything as I am now is because he really expanded my brain to new possibilities when I'm playing,” Spatzier said. “I started very traditional, but as I played with him, he realized I'm more attracted to those modern sounds. So he opened that door for me.”
Once I realized my worth, that’s when I was like, ‘Ah, now I can be free.’ There’s no point in fretting over mistakes you can make because it hasn’t happened yet. There’s nothing to worry about once you start the song, other than just trying to serve the music.
Although the jazz genre is defined by its spontaneity, Spatzier said he keeps tools under his belt to outline those impromptu diversions. Beyond the standard musical patterns he inserts, Spatzier utilizes variations he learned from Ovsepian, specifically his practice book Fractal Limit.
“It’s a bunch of crazy exercises,” he said as he played a section of the exercise. Starting at the center of the keyboard, the complex melody expanded in opposite directions — seemingly chaotic, yet harboring a distinct musical pattern.
“It’s a really modern sound, so you can't just shove it in anywhere, right? I can’t just go —” He began a solo, with a jarring sudden transition into the full fractal expansion. “ —that doesn't sound good. But—”
He played the solo again, introducing the bits of the ‘fractal pattern’ first, then led into the full rolling melody. “I justified it by introducing that idea earlier,” he explained as he lifted his hands from the keys. “You can make it work in context.”
Spatzier also takes his audience and setting into account when weaving together impromptu performances.
“I try to keep my solo true to what I'm imagining in my head as often as I possibly can,” he said. “But there's instances where you have to mind the audience or the tune that you're playing. If you're playing at a nursery home, you don't want to go — [plays funky modern jazz riff] — they're not gonna like that. They want the — [plays traditional jazz riff] — just really traditional stuff. So that’s what I mean by context.”
With accumulated experience, Spatzier said he’s been liberated from performance anxiety and perfectionism that plagued him in his early years facing the piano.
“There's always the adrenaline you get from going on stage and actually performing,” he admitted. “But once I realized my worth, that's when I was like, ‘Ah, now I can be free.’ There's no point in fretting over mistakes you can make because it hasn't happened yet. There's nothing to worry about once you start the song, other than just trying to serve the music. That's what I think of now when I play — ‘How can I make this collective sound better?’”
Similarly to his mindset towards performing music, Spatzier maintains an unconfined approach to considering music.
“When I think about jazz, I imagine it as more of a scope than something you can define other genres by,” he said. “I wouldn't say there's a sub-genre I like — I just like jazz. I find it almost a disservice to throw things into categories sometimes because it could misinterpret what the artist wants their song to be.”
IV. MENTORSHIP
Guiding the next generation.
As a fourth-year in the LACES Jazz Band, Spatzier has taken sophomore Benjamin Rahav and freshman Gian-Marco Algeriam under his tutelage. Lubin encouraged Spatzier to grow as a musician by helping others reinforce his internalized lessons. With a smile, Lubin recalled when he first assigned the mentees to Spatzier.
“He came up to me asking, ‘Mr. Lubin, how do I teach swing?’ And I’m just like, ‘Welcome to the life of being a teacher!’” He smiled. “You just have to be creative and think about how you internalized it.”
Rahav first saw Spatzier’s performance in the jazz band as an 8th grader. Even as he joined the classical-oriented LACES orchestra, his mind was on Spatzier’s performance he witnessed.
“In 8th grade, I watched him solo, and that really inspired me to get more into music. And when I was in the orchestra, I wanted to make it into the jazz band,” Rahav said. “That was my inevitable goal.”
Spatzier said he was initially at a loss at where to start with his newfound mentees.
“I know all these complex musical strategies and techniques and all this garbage and they don’t,” Spatzier said. “So obviously, I can’t just go up to them and be like, ‘Hey, play that chord altered and in your right hand, and put an upper structure of the flat five.’ They’ll be like, ‘What the ****?’”
He compared the process to speaking a different language, describing the struggle of conveying abstract concepts so his mentees can understand and use them.
“Or — it’s like trying to teach someone how to walk,” Spatzier said. “You know, ‘Take my two feet and move!’ It’s tough.”
Spatzier began by teaching the younger pianists II-V-Is: a progression of three chords in jazz that leads to a musical “resolution” in the final chord. The I chord’s resolution brings a feeling of release in music after developing tension with the II and V chords — almost like exhaling after holding a deep breath. The II-V-I is the most common chord progression in jazz.
“The way they learn now is through repetition, so I give them a drill to work on and they do that over and over again,” said Spatzier. “That’s where I started from — I learned every single II-V-I and every single key. And then from there, everything kind of shot up because a jazz standard is essentially just II-V-Is.”
Despite Spatzier’s preoccupation with preparing for auditions in his senior year, Rahav said his mentor is always open for questions during jazz class.
“He’ll break down what he’s doing and how he’s doing it, and if I have any questions for exercises or voicings to practice,” Rahav said. “They’re the kind of universal things that’ll help me have a base so I can teach myself other things – it’s really handy.”
Spatzier’s leadership of the jazz band is seen even in everyday practice sessions. Pianists crowd around Spatzier as the song begins: Betty Carter’s arrangement of “Thou Swell,” a jazz standard. Rahav pulls out his phone, asking if he can record and take notes. “Sure,” says Spatzier with a laugh, “but I’m really not that good.”
Several minutes into the run-through, Spatzier’s solo commences. Though the mentees’ phones are aimed at his hands, their eyes are glued to him; Rahav lets out a quiet chuckle as Spatzier concludes the solo.
Spatzier also has help from LACES instructors in his mentorship venture. As a professional drummer, Weatherwax coordinates some of the communication within the trio piano-bass-drums dynamic.
“I’ll be facilitating some of that jargon and get them to understand how to speak to each other in a really efficient manner,” Weatherwax said. “And he’s already pretty good about talking to bass players and he understands how to structure baselines.”
Given Spatzier’s natural leadership of the trio, Weatherwax is excited to see how Spatzier expresses “what he wants in the music to happen.”
“He does have the most experience out of everybody,” Weatherwax said. “He’s taking the reins in terms of song selection and arranging, so we’ll see how that pans out.”
V. PROFESSIONAL LIFE
To Europe and beyond.
Spatzier applied to music schools across the United States and Europe including UCLA, the Berklee College of Music, Switzerland’s Basel Jazz Campus, and the Amsterdam University of the Arts. He ultimately chose the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, a division of the latter European university, upon considering factors such as faculty, tuition, and geographic location.
“[I’m most excited to] get to meet a bunch of people from all over the world and work with them,” Spatzier said. “See how they interpret jazz, see what I can learn from that.”
Spatzier’s parents are supportive of his international ventures in jazz music.
“It’s a different world in terms of music,” said Marcin about the European jazz scene. “But they have enough American jazz players who go there to offer master classes at both schools, so he would not lose touch with American jazz.”
“I mean, it’s so exciting for him. Empty nester syndrome is about to kick in for me, but it’s almost like a full circle, right?” Aga laughed, looking at Marcin and the younger Spatzier. “Marcin left Poland for music and came to America. I followed to explore our relationship further and explore America. We stayed — can you believe it? — all these years. So it’s just this amazing way of life.”
Spatzier also values the influences that colliding jazz worlds would have on his creative musical ventures in Amsterdam.
“It’s also a very international hub,” Spatzier said. “So there’s different influences coming into jazz there. That’s pretty valuable, especially as a writer, because I’m trying to find more global influences and work them into my tunes. And there’s also this European jazz that’s more classically influenced that I recently discovered and started being more attracted to. There’s nowhere else to get it but there.”
Marcin wishes for Spatzier to maintain his close ties with his peers as he enters various new communities in and out of the country.
“The ability to connect with people is important,” said Marcin. “Especially if you’re talking about music, because that’s a tough world to be in. Hustle 24/7, really.”
Lubin agreed and stressed the importance of enjoying the process of musicianship when discussing Spatzier’s future.
“My hope for Kai is that wherever he goes, he just continuously find some joy in playing,” said Lubin. “As we get older, I see some cats get into their careers after [music] school and it gets to the point where it feels like a job — ‘I just need to pay my bills. I just need to have money for my family.’ So I hope he constantly keeps that joy, no matter what happens in life. That he just enjoys being a musician."
