Lakeport >> When other kids were listening to Top 40 hits on the radio, Lao Tizer was busy soaking in concert pianists and composers.
The jazz pianist, who performs at Library Park tonight, was first exposed to the piano at the age of five, and though his parents brought the instrument home for his sister, Tizer was the one who took a natural liking to it. But it wasn’t until the age of nine that he convinced them to enroll him in lessons.
Tizer was way ahead of the game by then though. A family friend had previously given him some rudimentary tips, and he began experimenting from there. By the time he arrived at his first lesson, he was already composing music.
“When I was 6 years old playing around on the piano not really know what I was doing, something about it was intriguing,” he said.
When he entered his junior year of high school, he found jazz. He’s been performing the genre since. But it wouldn’t be accurate to call his music straight-up jazz. Instead he’d describe it as world jazz fusion, a cohesive mixture of jazz, rock, classical, Afro Cuban and world rhythms.
Mostly, it’s about what feels right for that project.
“I never thought about being formulaic about what kind of genre our band is going to be,” Tizer said. “The music defines the genre as opposed to the genre defining the music we’re going to do.”
With a shifting line-up of about ten musicians, diversity is key. The group is based on a traditional jazz trio, and the other players only serve to add extra flavors to the sound. Sometimes they’re a three-piece, and sometimes six players take to the stage. The common thread? It’s all “compositionally strong,” Tizer explained.
Tizer’s musical journey, like many musicians, has been a long one. In high school he was doing a good deal of solo work, producing and recording. Then at 18 he moved from his home in Colorado out to LA with his manager. He scored a demo deal, for which he recorded three songs.
He began his own group from there. Although it all started in 1998, they’ve been doing the bulk of their touring over the last eight years.
The core trio — Tizer on piano, Ric Fierabracci on bass and Andy Sanesi on drums — will be playing at Library Park tonight for the Summer Concert Series. The group is based mostly in LA — with a few musicians living on the east coast — but they make efforts to travel around California. As such, this won’t be Tizer’s first visit to Library Park. They’ll be performing a host of original instrumentals.
While they play the same songs at every show, no two performances are the same. It’s a defining characteristic of jazz, that there’s this improvisational element to the whole thing. Each song has been composed by Tizer, but there are sections during which the musicians are free to follow their whims.
And this spontaneity is what makes lives performances so enjoyable. The audience will pick up what the musicians are sending out and return it back two-fold.
“If they see us having fun together on stage they feed off that energy,” said Tizer. “For us as musicians, the most gratifying moment is when there’s this synergy.”
Because while recording is great, the shows are the real meat of being a musician. “It’s kind of the most natural thing for most of us, to share music with a live audience,” Tizer said.
Lao Tizer will be beneath the gazebo at Library Park in Lakeport tonight from 6:30-8 p.m. There will be CDs for sale at the show.
Jennifer Gruenke can be reached at 900-2019.
