“Jazz can be for everybody” by Pat Berman
About a performance at New South Music Hall & Whiskey Parlor’s Jazz Workshop
…He played three one-hour sets of sensual and cerebral music at a penetrating and absorbing emotional pitch. “I start with a basic riff and then improvise,” he said. “If the riff is pretty then I’ll start with that emotion and play pretty sounds.”
The basic riff sounded intermittently throughout and arrangement and while his playing was wonderfully spontaneous he never lost or obscured the emotional tone of the piece.
Steig considers the label jazz music as being perhaps limited and misunderstood and prefers that his music be identified as improvisational. “That’s really all it is,” he explained.
Value judgments carry little weight with Steig. “How can you not like jazz?” he said of his music. “it’s just different. Everyone plays differently.”
“I know when the technique is good (when a musician performs) because I’m a musician but the music still has to move you…”