Jazz piano at the University of Washington has been the domain of professor Marc Seales for the past 37 years, but after June 30 of this year, he will no longer be a familiar sight around the Music Building, and visitors will no longer be invited to take a seat among the piles of papers and books, photos, mementos, and the two grand pianos that occupy his small office on the ground floor of the Music Building.
Reflecting upon his years at the UW on a recent morning and why he’s retiring this year, Seales is to the point: “I just need to be in a different environment,” he says. “You know, I think I'm just tired of this place. I mean, I've been here 37 years. That's a long time.”
More than half his life, much of it spent as the only permanent faculty member and chair of the UW’s Jazz Studies program. When Seales was hired as an associate professor in 1989, he was the only full-time faculty member teaching alongside longtime lecturer Roy Cummings. In the years since, the program has taken new directions, welcoming additional tenure-track faculty (professor and program chair Cuong Vu and associate professor Ted Poor), and adding a master’s degree program. Seales has rolled with the changes while continuing to nourish a healthy performance and recording career outside of school, releasing numerous recordings of original music and inspired cover arrangements and performing with some of the top players in the region and nationally.
His devoted local following turned out for Seales’s three concerts last year at the School of Music, which drew hundreds of fans, former and current students, and old friends he hadn’t seen in ages. Regular appearances at jazz festivals, Seattle Art Museum, and area jazz venues keep his music in the public eye, and he is frequently heard on the airwaves of the region’s premiere jazz radio station, KNKX. He was inducted into Jazz Hall of Fame in 2009 by Seattle’s Earshot Jazz organization. His widest reach came in the mid-1990s when an excerpt of his song “Highway Blues,” recorded with his trio New Stories, was included among jazz sample music in the Windows XP package and downloaded by millions of users, but jazz fans in the Pacific Northwest have been aware of his talents since his days as house pianist at storied Pioneer Square jazz club Parnell’s and at Seattle’s Jazz Alley, where he performed with top touring musicians such as Jackie McLean, Eddie Harris, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Joe Henderson, Clifford Jordan, Art Farmer, and many others.
One might assume that Seales knew early on he was destined to be a pianist, but that is not the case. His introduction to his instrument of choice was not his own choice, he says, but that of his mother, who enrolled him and his brother, Jesse, in piano lessons when the family was living in the Bay Area in the late 1960s. He didn’t particularly want to play the piano, he says, “but since my sisters were playing piano all the time in the house, and one of them was really good at it, it was kind of like: Okay, that's what we do. Was I into practicing? No, not really. Was my brother into practicing? No, not really. We were just doing it, and my mom made us practice, and we were okay at it.”
Later, the Seales family settled in Tacoma. Seales’ brother Jesse had switched from piano to guitar and had become obsessed with practicing. The brothers eventually formed a rock band, The Seales Brothers, that performed regionally with Jesse Seales on guitar and Marc Seales on keyboards. And though his brother was driven and serious about being a professional musician, Marc felt ambivalent and eventually ended up quitting the band to go to college.
“It wasn't because I didn't enjoy playing that music. It was that I didn't enjoy hanging out in those places, and I did not enjoy working with some of the people that were in our band, really, either. I enjoyed working with my brother, who was a driven, curious person who demanded perfection. The other people in our band could care less. But we had to have them. And they were talented guys, very.”
Seales entered Western Washington University in 1972 as an economics major while his brother continued the band, changing the name to Strypes and performing all over the greater Seattle region.
Though he spent three years as an economics major, Seales inevitably found himself drawn to Western’s music program, eventually changing his major to music after connecting with some inspirational student musicians, some of whom he remains connected with today. He graduated in 1977 and spent the next decade alternating between teaching and performance gigs. When he accepted the job at the UW, he had been in a cycle of part-time university teaching assignments and stints as a touring musician, often with saxophonist and mentor Don Lanphere, and feeling conflicted about devoting himself to life on the road.
At a crossroads, now married, with a baby daughter, Maddie, he made some phone calls and some important life-altering decisions that solidified his commitment to a career in academia.
“I became a professor because Maddie was born, and it was like, we had nothing. I mean, we went to the welfare office to get medical coupons. We had no insurance, we had nothing. I made some calls to Los Angeles and New York, and I got calls back, and was offered auditions and one of the prominent ones was Janet Jackson's thing. So I was gonna do that or do this. And trust me, this worked better for everybody involved. The Janet Jackson thing, I would have auditioned. Maybe I would have gotten it. The conductor guy was somebody I knew. Who knows? I would have made a lot of money. I'd probably would have pissed her off and got fired by saying something, because I have done that in the past.”
Thirty-seven years and many hundreds of students later, Seales’s daughter is now grown and an attorney based in Los Angeles, and he is contemplating a UW career that contains too many memorable moments to recount in full. But when pressed to mention a few that stand out, he shares several that immediately come to mind:
“Well, there was a time when we had all these guests here. We had an Allen Foundation grant, so we had Marcus Miller here. We had Kenny Garrett here. We had Eddie Palmieri; we had Billy Taylor. Mike Stern. John Pattucci…..
“One time Larry Coryell brought a bunch of guys over from the Jazz Alley to sit in and play with the big band for, like, an hour and a half! Who does that? And I remember Marcus Miller, I brought him down to hear the big band. They were playing “Tutu,” which he wrote for Miles's record, and he listened to it, and he pointed out the mistakes in the charts. He went, “No, it goes like this.” You know? It was great.
“Another time (jazz pianist) Aaron Parks was in town. He must have been, like, 19 or whatever, but he was playing with Terrence Blanchard. I said, ‘Hey, man, why don't you come up to the school? I got a piano class, and these people are gonna play. And maybe you could listen and say some stuff.’ So I had this student who really had never played jazz piano before. She knew how the piano worked. I think she played piano in, like jazz choirs or something. So she was just scared to death about it, and it took me, like, about two or three times to get her to finally play in front of someone. And I think she was playing “My Funny Valentine” or something like that, and basically, she was really just going to play the melody and improvise very simply over the melody. And she was freaking out about it, but she played nice, and Aaron was sitting there. And afterwards, he said, "You know, that was really nice, 'cause it was really different, and there were a lot of things that I hadn't thought about that maybe I should think about myself.” And it just made me think…Yeah, he has a Zen thing going about music. About, just listening and taking it all in, and taking in, like, what makes that different and what could you steal from it, or whatever. Don't be like, snobby about it.
“Other memorable things were more student driven. I had a piano class with a bunch of students that was like one of the best piano classes I ever had. All those guys were really good players (he points to a faded poster with a photo of said class taped to his office wall). And this one guy was like the real star, he, like, transferred from North Texas. He was really good. Jason Richie. And he was a pretty good practicer, but he wasn't always practicing. He had so much ability, he didn't have to practice so much. Well, he came to the piano to play in the master class and he was, like, as good as anybody in the world that day. And he even knew it. And he was shocked. Everything he played was golden. And at that moment, I said, ‘This doesn't happen very often to people. And when it does, you have to remember it.’ And either the same day or the next time, I had another student, he was a geology major, and he just had very limited chops. He knew how jazz piano should sound. And he'd come to the piano lesson and sometimes he'd be pretty good and other times, it would just not be very good. Same thing happened to him. He walked out, he played, and it was like he could hear everything. Everything he played was golden. And I had to say the same thing to him. And he knew it. It was like, "Wow!" And so, you know, that has happened to me. It's gonna happen to everybody. The moral of the story is: Everybody plays great. It's when you suck, how bad you suck... And the good guys who I've heard suck, they suck here (motions high above his head). And the rest of us suck here (motions lower). That's the moral of that little story.”
Marc Seales performs with the UW Chamber Singers in their year-end concert at Meany Hall on Friday, May 30.
Five Questions for Marc Seales
The longtime UW jazz studies professor answers our questions on the cusp of his UW retirement.
What are you reading or listening to these days?
I was reading this book, Homo Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari, and I got about halfway through it, and I haven't picked it back up, but I was on a little mission with that. I haven't been reading much of anything for the last five or ten years, even. But I listen to music all the time. Lately I've been listening to a lot of older pop things from the 60s to 1982. I'm always listening to some Miles Davis something. I'm always listening to some sort of orchestral music. I'm listening to the latest Snarky Puppy record. I recently was listening to this record by this electronic guy, Aphex Twin. I was also listening to Flying Lotus, another electronic guy. I was listening to Dave Gruesin and Lee Rittenour, their Brazil record, brand new. I've been listening to this Marcus Miller record called The Sun Don't Lie. And Tales. Those two records, they were the first records that he made. I also was listening to Angela Hewitt playing the Bach Preludes and Fugues. So... I listen to everything.
Is there a piece of music that you never tire of hearing?
Yeah, I can listen to Miles’s records. There might be certain ones that I go back and listen to often. And those Al Jarreau things that Jay Graydon produced. I thought I was tired of listening to him, and I listened to it yesterday in the car. I went, "Mmm. I guess I'm not tired of this."
Miles's record “In a Silent Way.” I mean, it's still my favorite record ever. I listened to it all the time. I still listen to it all the time and have reverence.
What's the first thing you're going to get into when you're no longer teaching?
I have some record things that I have to finish. I want to spend more time keeping my health together, riding my bike or walking. Doing whatever. Maybe being able to check out my daughter in L.A.
What's something a faculty colleague told you that you never forgot?
Wow, there were a couple. One was actually something Roy Cummings said. "Change is inevitable,” he said, “and when things are going well, they might not go so well. When things are bad, they'll get better.” That was one thing I didn't forget. And (faculty colleague) Rhonda Kline said something very recently. She said, ‘Your sound is just gorgeous on the piano.’ And nobody here really told me that before.
What will you miss about teaching here?
Well, the one thing is the young energy from the school, and there's a few people (I will miss), but there's something you can't replace about that young energy. It’s not just the students; I think you feel it when you walk around, even. There's just this energy, and some of it is really positive, and some of it I'm not so crazy about, so I don't know if I will miss that, but I know as a fact, just from playing music, that sometimes you just need some young energy because it's different than older energy.
And I'm going to miss going someplace every day to work. That's what I'm going to miss. Because that's just how I was brought up.
Marc Seales and trio mates Jeff Johnson and Steve Korn perform at the Edmonds Jazz Walk, Saturday, June 8, 8 to 11 p.m., at Musicology Co., 420 5th Ave. S. #107, Edmonds. The UW Studio Jazz Ensemble performs under Seales's direction earlier that day at 6:15 to 7 pm, at the Edmonds Theater, 415 Main Street. More information about the Jazz Walk is available here.
Marc Seales Discography at Discogs.com: (External link to commercial site; no affiliation with the UW or the School of Music).