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<\/p>\nA prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of jazz\/classical luminary Branford Marsalis, Sean Mason first came to wide attention with his 2023 release, The Southern Suite<\/i>. But the Juilliard-trained pianist, composer and band leader had already established himself as a vital part of the jazz community. His music has a distinctively melodic character; that quality arose naturally thanks to Mason\u2019s formative years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love melody,\u201d he explains. \u201cI grew up singing in church, and I also grew up with popular music.\u201d He notes that in his younger years, his friends and classmates didn\u2019t listen to jazz. \u201cWho wanted to listen to jazz?\u201d he asks rhetorically, and with a laugh. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to go to school and be like, \u2018Hey man, you heard these Coltrane records?\u2019 Nobody cared about those kinds of things!\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But Mason did care. \u201cI\u2019m thankful to have parents who introduced me to that music,\u201d he says. At home he\u2019d hear the music of Duke Ellington and Ray Charles; for Mason, the latter represented a bridge between jazz and popular music. And unlike his friends, he willingly, enthusiastically listened to jazz. \u201cI remember being 13 or 14 and having my headphones on at school,\u201d he says. He was spinning some Miles Davis. \u201cThe trumpet was so loud that they could hear it through the \u2018phones. And my friends were picking on me.\u201d Mason says that it was \u201ca journey\u201d to develop the confidence to admit liking jazz.<\/p>\n
Mason says that as he listened and studied the form, it was the music\u2019s melodic qualities that drew him in. \u201cSo when I had the opportunity to write and record my music, I wanted to make sure to honor those values,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Mason encountered one of his inspirations when he was an 18 year old student at UNC Greensboro. \u201cI met Branford Marsalis when he was an Artist-in-residence at North Carolina Central.\u201d Once a semester, Marsalis gave a lesson to students at other colleges. When he visited UNCG, he met Mason. \u201cHe really took a liking to my playing,\u201d Mason says. Not long after, Marsalis took the young pianist on the road with him.<\/p>\n
Marsalis enlisted Mason to play piano on his soundtrack for the Academy Award-winning 2020 film Ma Rainey\u2019s Black Bottom<\/i>. Set in 1927 Chicago, the film features both period music from Rainey and additional pieces composed by Marsalis. Mason says that his mission for the pandemic-era sessions in New Orleans was a specific and challenging one. \u201cMusically, I had to pretend that 1930 and after didn\u2019t happen,\u201d he explains. \u201cThe only thing that happened was the \u201820s and before.\u201d That meant clearing his piano style of any influences that came from most of the 20th<\/sup> century and beyond.<\/p>\n \u201cIt took a lot of studying piano playing of the 1920s,\u201d Mason says. He had to dig deep into the music of the 19th<\/sup> century as well. \u201cBecause that\u2019s what they<\/i> were listening to,\u201d he says. \u201cIt made me get down into classical music as well as [exploring] the differences between ragtime and traditional jazz.\u201d<\/p>\n That experience informed Mason\u2019s solo debut. Featuring all original material, The Southern Suite<\/i> has a character that once again displays Mason\u2019s emphasis upon melody. He says that the album\u2019s eight pieces \u201call come from the same melodic and harmonic family; they\u2019re just different branches of that tree.\u201d He believes that sense binds the songs together as a cohesive whole. \u201cThey feel like eight different arms, all hugging you.\u201d<\/p>\n He believes that rather than sporting a Southern \u201csound,\u201d the album as a whole instead has a Southern sensibility. \u201cI think the Southern tradition instilled some traditional values in me as a person,\u201d he says, \u201cvalues that then I can portray in my music.\u201d<\/p>\n Central among those values, Mason believes, is a respect for one\u2019s elders. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot to learn from them,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd the South has taught me that history repeats itself.\u201d He says that studying music of the past and honoring his roots has brought a certain character to his original work. With The Southern Suite<\/i>, he aimed to express his own musical voice while remaining rooted in tradition. \u201cI grew up with that sound, that soul, that spirit,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s something that I don\u2019t think you can get many places elsewhere. And I\u2019m grateful for it.\u201d<\/p>\n Both pieces \u2013 playing the music of others, composing and playing original works \u2013 fit together seamlessly for Sean Mason. \u201cSome people are only composers, and some are only interpreters; we see that a lot in classical music,\u201d he says. \u201cI love the discipline of both: trying to master the art of interpretation \u2013 which is its own art form: getting into the composer’s head and understanding what he or she may want in the composition \u2013 and then also trying to master the art of composition.\u201d<\/p>\n Mason\u2019s Quartet and Quintet play a bit of music by other composers, but he says that the groups mostly focus on his original music. And it all comes from inspiration. \u201cMusic can\u2019t come from itself,\u201d he says. \u201cI believe that artists have to be inspired by something,\u201d Mason says. \u201cOtherwise art can\u2019t be created.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of jazz\/classical luminary Branford Marsalis, Sean Mason first came to wide attention with his 2023 release, The Southern Suite. But the Juilliard-trained pianist, composer and band leader had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27967,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,42],"tags":[5487],"class_list":["post-27966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-jazz","tag-sean-mason","cat-41-id","cat-42-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27968,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27966\/revisions\/27968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}