New Orleans piano virtuoso comes to Casper

by Elysia Conner
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 9:33 AM MDT

Tom McDermott will tickle the keys of the Nicolaysen Art Museum’s old grand piano on Aug. 27 with a unique blend of American and world music.

It will be a rare opportunity for Casper audiences to listen to the New Orleans contemporary piano great as he plays from his critically-acclaimed repertoire.

In a post-Hurricane Katrina New York Times article, McDermott was named as “One of the 22 reasons New Orleans must be rebuilt.”

His latest album, “Choro do Norte,” also has been hailed by the New York Times as “excellent … bewitching.”

The Los Angeles Times said that the musician goes beyond vividly intermingling African, Cuban and Spanish cultures that long have powered New Orleans music.

He also reinvents Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag,” “with a party time Louisiana fervor,” and revivifies the old choro “Tico Tico” “with an avalanche of flying chords and fast octaves.”

The 2005 recording makes clear the connections between New Orleans jazz and ragtime and Brazilian choro music, the harmonically sophisticated, two-beat style popularized in the 1870s, according to the New York Times.

McDermott recorded the album in Rio de Janeiro with Brazilian and New Orleans musicians, and has traveled to Brazil 13 times.

Several of his albums also have received positive reviews from the Post and Times, as well as National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” “Rolling Stone,” “Piano Today” and more.

National Public Radio also included him in its first “All Music Considered” compilation.

Born in St. Louis, McDermott began playing piano at age 6. Being born in the home of ragtime music, he started playing it in his early teens.

He always loved the piano, but had not planned to become a professional musician. McDermott originally hoped to become a music journalist, but ended up flourishing in New Orleans as a pianist and composer.

Seeking security such as steady pay and benefits, the musician began freelancing for newspapers after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in art from St. Louis University.

He was the jazz and rock critic for the Globe-Democrat around the time he earned his master’s degree in music from Washington University in St. Louis.

McDermott’s passion for the music and a job at the World’s Fair lured him to New Orleans, where he has lived for the last 25 years.

Since then, he has toured the world, played at Carnegie Hall and recorded a Grammy-nominated album as a member of the Dukes of Dixieland.

McDermott also co-founded the New Orleans Nightcrawlers and has written music for the three-time Obie award-winning show “Nita and Zita.”

“It suits me,” he said about New Orleans, where blending music of different cultures was common even before the explosion of world music.

McDermott also plays traditional dance music of French, Spanish and other origins. A tourist in New Orleans was the one who turned him on to Brazilian music with Ernesto Nazareth, who is like a Brazilian Scott Joplin, McDermott said.

His interest in playing and incorporating a variety of music types into his own steadily grew.

Making connections between music is what it’s about, and today many musicians fuse music that might not ever have been thrown together before, McDermott said.

While people have been doing that as long as they have had access to other cultures, today it is more available.

McDermott recently listened to a woman named Fortuna, who blends Sephardic Jewish music with Brazilian rhythms.

He finds inspiration from many sources.

“Why don’t I play this music from Albania but with Cuban rhythm underneath it?” McDermott mused. “Why not? Let’s try it and see what happens.

“And,” he added, “it’s fun.”

His shows often include some “ragged up” John Philip Sousa marches or a Chopin nocturne with a Cuban rhythm and much more. He also throws in jazz, boogie-woogie and New Orleans R&B.

It’s a little harder to do as a solo pianist, he said, but he has his own way of working things out that you just have to hear to understand.

Right now, the musician is taking a car trip around the western two-thirds of the United States, with 20 gigs in one month.

McDermott never has played in Wyoming, and it was the last state in the union that he visited. Frequent flyer miles once allowed him to see the Jackson Hole and Yellowstone National Park area during a trip that was “ridiculously short,” he said.

This time, he looks forward to taking in more of the scenery and getting to know people.

If you go …

Tom McDermott to appear in Casper

Thursday, Aug. 27, at 7 p.m. at the Nicolaysen Art Museum & Discovery Center, 400 E. Collins.

Tickets are $10, and are available in advance or at the door.

A cash bar will be available.

All proceeds will go toward the artist.

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