Diné flutist, pianist release duo CD
By Cindy Yurth
Tséyi' Bureau
CHINLE, Aug. 29, 2011
(Courtesy photo)
Flutist Jerome Jim, left, and pianist Amy Greer, collaborated on the new CD "The Water is Wide."
Listen to a sample of Jim's works.
"It's a little like the difference between dating and being married," mused Diné flutist Jerome Jim, who just released a CD with his long-time accompanist, Amy Greer, as the Jim Greer Duo.
"We've grown together as performers," Jim said. "We've become really in tune with each other's sensibilities. There isn't this sense of a hired gun ... it's two musicians coming together to create a third thing."
It wasn't so much a conscious decision as "an evolution," Jim said.
"I really listen to her ideas on phrasing and even selecting repertoire," he said. "I suggest pieces I think she would really shine on, and she does the same for me."
It was a serendipitous fit considering that, in 2006, Jim picked Greer at random off a list of accompanists when he first started performing as a soloist in Albuquerque.
They're an odd match, the European-educated Navajo and the blonde Midwesterner. He has dogs, she has cats. Even when she was supposedly his accompanist, Greer occasionally butted heads with Jim over interpretation.
Perhaps it's that polarity that gives their music so much energy.
Jim had hoped their first CD as a duo, "The Water is Wide," would be a little easier to listen to than his intense 2009 debut, "Sometimes I Dream."
"What I realized after talking to people about the first CD was that people listen, but they don't really listen," he said. "I wanted to give them something they could listen to casually and say, 'Oh, that's nice music.'"
Still, there's the huge range of emotions, from growly to effervescent, that mark Jim's playing. And this time, Greer gets to shine, too.
"The first CD was honestly just about me," Jim said. "This time we picked pieces that allow her to flex her artistic muscle."
A consummate performer in her own right, Greer gets at the soul of the music even when she's holding back to let Jim shine.
It's a treat to hear more of her, especially on the three Clara Schumann romances. Although Jim is splendid on the familiar title track, it's Greer's rippling river in the background that gives the melancholy old folk song its context.
While Jim may have been trying for a simpler sound, he as usual plumbs the depths of the pieces, even standards like Franz Doppler's "Hungarian Pastoral Fantasy" (which, according to Jim, "you usually hear played very badly by high school students").
And while there is plenty of lightness and lyricism on this CD, there are times when you can tell Jim was exorcising some painful emotions.
The CD is dedicated to his nephew, Klayton, who died suddenly last year at the age of 19.
"All the pieces on this CD are ones he heard me play in recital," Jim said. "He attended every recital I played, even though he hated every minute of it."
Not long before Klayton died, Jim's sister was murdered in Albuquerque.
"So all this music is music I was playing during a really heavy, difficult time in my life," Jim said. "It may be my way of processing it."
Although there's no singing on the CD, the lost-love lyrics of "The Water is Wide" provide a theme.
"If you know the lyrics, it's about how love doesn't last forever," Jim said. "It's one of the cruel realities of life. You think you're going to live forever, you're going to have this person forever, but it doesn't last. Either they leave or they die."
But there's a flip side of that too.
"It's really about enjoying what you have at this moment."
The CD can be purchased online from the duo's Web site, http://thejimgreerduo.com, which also features some sample tracks.
You can hear Jim and Greer in concert, along with soprano Checky Okun, at 7:30 p.m. on Aug. 27 in Keller Hall on the University of New Mexico campus in a concert titled "Flutes, Birds and Gypsies."
The concert is a benefit for Health Care for the Homeless.