Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ben Clifton. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Ben, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
I started playing piano at a pretty early age, however it wasn’t until high school that I became interested in jazz. When I was about 14 or 15 one of my adult mentors at the time took me to a music venue in Pittsburgh called Little E’s Jazz Club. This was the first jazz club I had ever been to and I remember being mesmerized by the musicians. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that the musicians on the stage were improvising everything they were playing with no physical sheet music. At that point in time I was hooked and I knew that playing jazz was what I wanted to do. Fortunately, later on in life I had the opportunity to play with these musicians and that was a very rewarding experience!
Around that time my mom found a piano teacher by the name of Ron Bickel who was professor of Jazz Piano at Duquesne University. Throughout high school I had the opportunity to study music with him and if weren’t for his guidance I probably wouldn’t be the player I am today. Even though I wasn’t old enough he encouraged me to go to the jam sessions in town. I remember driving our family van every Monday to the Ava Lounge to watch local pianist Howie Alexander. Luckily the people at the bar still let me in to watch the music even though I wasn’t 18 yet! Howie was gracious enough to let me play and I met several other musicians my age with whom I began to play gigs with around town.
After high school I went to the University of Pittsburgh where I studied with Frank Cunimundo, an incredible Pittsburgh pianist who went to high school with world-renowned jazz legend Ahmad Jamal. I gained a lot of first hand knowledge in how to play traditional jazz styles from him. Not too many people have that type of experience working with a teacher like Frank and I was very honored to have studied with him. During this time I also had the opportunity to study with the late great Geri Allen right before her passing a couple of years ago.
Since finishing school I moved to Houston, TX and I’ve been leading my own bands as a bandleader with my piano trio playing at different jazz clubs. I also play the Hammond B3 Organ and have put together groups in that style of music. In addition to playing jazz I also play with several artists in Houston from different genres ranging from R&B, hip/hop, pop, and funk. Learning how to play jazz and transcribing from the great musicians of the past has really helped me musically, but has also paved the way for opportunities to meet and collaborate with other incredible musicians here in the Houston scene.
Ben, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am a pianist/keyboardist currently living in Houston, TX. My main musical genre is jazz, however I don’t confine myself to just that. I play any genre of music that people hire me to play and I like having different musical experiences.
My main project is with my piano trio. I play with my trio at several venues in the Houston area including the The Ready Room, Cezanne, and Axelrad (just to name a few). My band consists of Chad Wesselkamper on upright bass and Gavin Moolchan on drums. I released my first EP ‘Reflection’ in 2016 with my trio and I am currently in the process of recording my first full length album to be released next year. I also play the Hammond Organ and I have my own B3 Organ group that plays both originals and music from the Jazz Organ tradition paying tributes to the likes of players such as Jimmy Smith and Dr. Lonnie Smith.
In addition to working as an artist I also work as a sideman with several Houston groups. Some of these include The Houston Jazz Collective, The Houston Ensemble, The Aperio Orchestra and DJ Sun, the Royal Dukes Wedding band, and The Official BB King Blues Band, I also have had the opportunity to work with several upcoming artists in Houston such as Jalen Baker, Kelly Doyle, Jeremy Joseph, Robbie Madison, and Amanda Pascali. Their are so many great musicians here in Houston and I feel blessed to be part of this amazing community we have here! In addition to playing live shows I also teach advanced piano students who want to improve their piano skills. Lastly, I run a recording studio at of my house where I do session work for artists who need any type of piano or keyboards on their recordings.
I like the flexibility that music offers me and the ways that I have been able to meet so many great people from different walks of life. If you ever need a pianist/band for a cocktail event, wedding, corporate event, festival, or recording session I’m your guy and can make it happen!
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
I think the main mission of my music is to be as honest and authentic as I can in the music that I play. For instance, when I go to an art museum and look at a painting I often see paintings that blow me away by the attention to detail, the message behind the painting, the color scheme, etc. There are tons of different elements in the painting to focus on. The awesome thing about this is that I often find bits and pieces of my own life experience in other peoples’ art even though I don’t know the artist themself. I think that is a testament to the honestly, vulnerability, and authenticity of the person presenting the art. As a musician and jazz pianist I strive to make the music that is most personal to me because regardless of whether I like 100% of everything I play or not I trust that people will see a bit of themselves in my music. I believe I owe it to the world to put it out there.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
One big lesson that I’ve had to unlearn is having expectations about my playing. When I went through music school and even afterwards there was a heavy emphasis on learning jazz standards, playing “correct” chord voicings, playing fast bebop lines, etc. The list could go on and on and I will say that for musicians I do believe there is a time in life where these sorts of exercises are necessary for technical development to be musically proficient to some degree. The problem I ran into, however, is that I developed a mindset that in music there are “good notes” and “bad notes” and when I would go to play a gig I would get stuck in what some may call “analysis paralysis” where I was theoretically analyzing the notes I was playing, but they weren’t sound quite right. I would leave each gig feeling defeated beating myself up for how much of a bad job I thought I did and would tell myself I had to play better next time. It wasn’t until I came across the work of pianist Kenny Werner and his book “Effortless Mastery” where I began to start practicing the idea of self-acceptance in music. Werner talks a lot about letting go of musical expectations and just playing what you hear and freeing one’s mind as opposed to being worried about playing wrong notes because, as he argues, there really aren’t any wrong notes. This changed the game for me when I started applying this concept and it’s funny because now the less that I think about the technical aspects of music and focus on being present in the moment I almost always play much better because I’m accepting all of the notes I play, not just some of them. I heard one musician say recently that thought is the enemy of flow in music and I think that just about sums it up for me.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ben-clifton.com/
- Instagram: @bclifton_music