Composer KIRK NUROCK

KIRK NUROCK is refreshingly hard to pin down. He orchestrated for Leonard Bernstein, Dizzy Gillespie and Meredith Monk, composed a work for 2O voices and 3 canines which he conducted at Carnegie Hall, and won a scholarship at age 16, awarded by Duke Ellington. Keyboard Magazine called him "joyously iconoclastic" and the Village Voice, "a composer-pianist who has always defied categorization.” The New York Times put it succinctly: "Mr Nurock has unique credentials."

New York City 10011
BA, MM, The Juilliard School

Thoughts Of An Incurable Jazz Pianist...

(from 10/30/01)

I play as many wrong notes as I can. Everyone else plays the right notes quite beautifully. What could I possibly add?

Sometimes I prefer not playing with other musicians. I can barely follow what's happening in my own head, let alone theirs.

A piano isn't an instrument. It's a destiny.

I feel a hell of a lot younger at 50 than I did at 19: one of the many gifts of a life in music.

Most musicians play what they've already heard. Why not strive to play what we haven't heard yet?

I think the question of whether or not a person is Black should be determined by something other than the color of their skin.

Making honest music involves no less than getting completely naked. If you're keeping those undershorts on, you didn't get there yet.

I don't care about the quality of an artist's work, or whether it speaks to my narrow tastes. Everytime someone does something creative on the face of this earth, I think "Yes!--that's one more for our side!"

[with hat off to Groucho:] I didn't always play like an idiot--it's taken years of practice.

In 2001, there's no longer such a thing as American music or Russian music, Black music or (God help us) Gay music. It's all been blended. Pure music floats on air like the angels. It loses all its power when reduced to the false boundaries of civilization.

Speaking of false boundaries, I want to start an all Jewish big band. It would be called "All Jews Have Horns."

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