To Chicago theatergoers, he’s the demure fellow seated behind the piano at the Royal George Cabaret, earnestly backing the vocal quartet in the musical “Forever Plaid.”
But to anyone who follows the progress of the classic American pop song–from Gershwin to Berlin, Kern to Sondheim–he is an emerging star in his own right.
Kevin Cole may not yet be a household name (except in some very sophisticated households), but his work as a pianist and archivist is establishing him as the most important talent to arrive on the national scene since Michael Feinstein and John McGlinn began excavating long-lost gems of the American musical theater.
For all their considerable achievements, neither Feinstein (a superb cabaret singer and recording artist) nor McGlinn (conductor of the definitive recording of Kern’s “Show Boat”) can play a piano on Cole’s level. As a matter of fact, when it comes to performing music of Gershwin on the keyboard, Cole has few, if any, peers in the U.S. today.
Though it’s not difficult to name pianists with superior jazz credentials, wider repertoire and bigger reputations, none captures the romantic spirit and the glittering style of Gershwin’s own pianism quite so felicitously as Cole. Marcus Roberts may be the most brilliant young jazz pianist working today, Dick Hyman a walking encyclopedia of American pop music and Earl Wild a virtuoso with a Lisztian approach to the great American concertos of Gershwin, MacDowell, Barber and the like.
But when Cole sits down at a piano, you would swear Gershwin himself was at work.
“I’ll never forget the first time he played for me,” recalls Edward Jablonski, whose 1987 book “Gershwin: A Biography” (Doubleday) stands as the best single volume on the composer’s life and music. “Kevin was 15 years old, and on his first visit to New York, he had called me up to ask if he could meet me, and this tall, skinny kid walked into my apartment and said, `I can play Gershwin, you know.’ So I invited him to sit at the piano, and my god did he play Gershwin.”
“I asked him if he had ever heard recordings of Gershwin playing, and he hadn’t, so I played for him tapes of the old radio broadcasts that Gershwin did.
“And then I said to Kevin, `Do you notice something about those recordings? You sound just like him.’ “
So smitten was Jablonski with what he heard that he quickly arranged for the youngster to perform for the Gershwin family.
“There were tears all around,” remembers Jablonski. “They said they never thought they would hear a piano sound like that again.”
Last February, Chicagoans had a rare opportunity to hear Cole’s Gershwin during a one-night show, “Night Owls,” that he presented with vocalist-instrumentalist Morgan Evans and bassist Peter Huffaker at the Royal George Cabaret. Critical success and audience enthusiasm suggested that the revue eventually would enjoy a longer run, and, indeed, “Night Owls” recently reopened at the same cabaret.
Though every number that Cole and friends perform–from Irving Berlin to Harold Arlen–packs a punch, it’s Cole’s solo treatment of Gershwin that astonishes audiences.
“For me, Gershwin just has been a theme running through my life for about as long as I can remember,” says Cole, who was born 38 years ago in Bay City, Mich. He has lived in Chicago since “Plaid” opened here, in 1994.
“I saw the movie `Rhapsody in Blue’ on TV when I was 7, and I immediately went to the library to check out books on Gershwin, including `The Gershwin Years,’ ” says Cole, referring to an earlier Jablonski tome. “The librarian told me that the author also had grown up in Bay City, and from that moment on I was determined to meet Ed Jablonski.”
After graduating from the Interlochen Arts Academy in 1977, Cole launched his career as a roving pianist-music director; by 1984, he made musical history with his recording debut, “Lady Be Good: First Recordings of the Unknown George Gershwin.” Released first on a Fanfare LP and in 1987 on a Pro Arte CD, the recording brought to the public such Gershwin exotica as the 1925 miniature “Short Story” and the 1919 song “Yan-Kee.”
But the disc was equally notable for the way in which these works were played, with Cole capturing the seemingly nonchalant virtuosity and bittersweet melodicism that defined Gershwin’s own recordings. Though out of print for the last couple of years, “Lady Be Good” reportedly will be reissued later this year, as part of a wave of Gershwin releases that will coincide with the composer’s centennial, in 1998.
“When it comes to playing Gershwin’s music like Gershwin, you cannot teach anybody to play that way, they just do it,” says Jablonski. “In the case of Kevin, he had some sort of background of listening to Gershwin’s music, but until he came to my apartment that first visit he never had heard Gershwin play before.
“So I would have to say he just has an innate feeling for the way this music ought to sound. Gershwin, too, played in a very individual way. Gershwin’s sister (Frankie) told me that Gershwin never played any of his songs the same way twice. So there was always this element of imagination in Gershwin’s playing, and humor–that’s one of the things that you find in Gershwin’s rhythms, and Kevin brings that out.
“There’s also a romanticism, which is what Kevin has, as well as a kind of appreciation and understanding of the form,” he says.
To illustrate the point, Jablonski recalls presenting Cole with sketches of songs that Gershwin never had completed, penning only the melody lines.
“I showed them to Kevin,” says Jablonski, “he looked at them, and all of a sudden he knew the structure for the songs, and which chords would best fit the melody.”
It isn’t just Jablonski, however, who has been seduced by Cole’s Gershwin. When record producer Tommy Krasker was overseeing a historic restoration of the 1926 version of George and Ira Gershwin’s musical “Oh, Kay!” (on Nonesuch), he enlisted Cole as pianist, vocal director and arranger.
And when the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra was presenting major Gershwin tribute concerts in 1996 and ’97, Cole was piano soloist on both occasions, playing the “Rhapsody in Blue” and Concerto in F to noisy ovations.
For his part, Cole simply feels it’s his lifelong ardor for Gershwin’s music that enables him to play it so well. As for specific keyboard devices and voicings he uses, “I don’t think that’s something I would want to spell out very much,” he says with a smile. “Maybe someday, when I’m an old man, I’ll put it down on paper.”
With next year’s Gershwin centennial likely to raise Cole’s profile, it seems only a matter of time before the general audience discovers what the cognescenti already know. The current engagements of “Forever Plaid” (which won Cole a Jeff Award for musical direction in 1995) and “Night Owls,” as well as a Jerome Kern revue that Cole hopes to bring to Chicago in the fall, should underscore his affinity for a broad range of American popular song.
“He’s certainly not just confined to Gershwin,” says Jablonski. “I remember once he was playing piano in my apartment, when Irving Berlin called. And I said to Berlin, whom I occasionally worked for, `Boss, would you like to hear an Irving Berlin medley?’ And he said, `Why not?’ So I shouted out from the kitchen, `Kevin, make up an Irving Berlin medley,’ and I pulled the phone toward the living room, so that Berlin could hear him.
“So Kevin finished off a totally improvised medley of Berlin songs, and Berlin said to me, `I want to talk to that kid.’ I called Kevin to the phone, he looked mystified, and I said to him, `Mr. Berlin would like to speak with you.’
“And you know what Berlin said? `Jesus Christ, kid, if I could play like that, I would never have been a songwriter.’ “
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Kevin Cole’s “Night Owls” plays at 8 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, and June 9 and 10 at the Royal George Cabaret, 1641 N. Halsted St. Call 312-988-9000.
