Posted on Oct. 25: Piano is his life
[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Hugh_Hartwell.jpg” caption=”Hugh Hartwell”]Sitting on a bench in front of a new Steinway piano in Convocation Hall, Hugh Hartwell plays a couple of lines of Billy Boy. In his head, he sings a few lines, hums softly. His fingers bounce off the piano keys like raindrops and the jazz resonates throughout the stained glass hall.
“When I play, what I'm doing is singing to myself. In the end, everything is melody and melody comes from inside of you,” he says.
Born in Hamilton, McMaster's former director of Art, Drama and Music, has been playing the piano since he was six. Music has had a tremendous impact on his life since then. He began his professional career as a musician at 13, traveling with rock and roll bands and playing in festivals and competitions. At 16, he was a guest soloist with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He played with a trio band on a ferry that toured the islands of Montreal and when he was 18, he ventured to London, England to tone his technique in classical piano. There, he practiced eight hours a day, seven days a week and took lessons once a week. At night he played in jazz clubs in Soho. Later, Hartwell taught music at Hamilton College in upstate New York, studied music at McGill University and did his graduate work at Pennsylvania State before joining McMaster's music faculty in 1976.
But among his musical experiences, his fondest is what he is doing now. The associate professor of jazz music, 20th-century concert music and music theory plays in the Hugh Hartwell Trio Band that will perform in the School of the Arts' annual McMaster Concert Series for 2002-03. His trio band, which includes music studio instructor Kevin Dempsey on drums and Marek Semeniuk on bass, performs Tuesday, Oct. 29 from 12:30 to 1:20 p.m. in Convocation Hall.
Click here for a listing of the McMaster Concert Series.
The diversity of the audience is one reason Hartwell enjoys playing in the free lunchtime concert series. “The audience ranges from first-year musical students to community members to retired faculty and elementary students. We try to program something that is going to have a wide appeal,” he says. “We also try to create an ambience that's inclusive and friendly. We pay close to the audience so that they feel like they're part of the act.”
Like many of the musicians who will perform in McMaster's concert series, music has been Hartwell's life. “I play daily, I listen to music daily and I think about music all of the time,” he says. “I've been involved with music my whole life. It's a very rigorous art that satisfies you emotionally. What else is there that speaks to you as emotionally and physically as music,” he asks, then plays a few lines of Frank Sinatra's Too Close for Comfort.
Playing the piano is kinetic, he says. “If you feel it in your body you're going to sound better and play better, emotionally, intellectually and technically.”
Photo caption: Hugh Hartwell practices the piano for his Tuesday, Oct. 29 concert in Convocation Hall. Photo credit: Chantall Van Raay
