Music

The Piano Room

After the dojo,
the keys.

Classically trained, jazz at heart. Five decades of standards, ballads, and the occasional improvisation when no one’s listening.

By Zareer Patell  ·  Hyderabad  ·  Since 1972

Liner Notes

Same hands, different work.

People ask how the karate and the piano fit together. They never have, really — and that’s the point. The body that learns one kind of discipline is open to the next.

I started on the piano young, formally, with Trinity College examinations and all the polite rigor that implies. The jazz came later, as a relief from the rigor — an argument with it. Where karate asks for perfect form repeated until it disappears, jazz asks for form held loosely enough to break on purpose.

The kata teaches you a sentence. The chord progression gives you a paragraph. The best evenings are when one informs the other.

Z.P., from the bench

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