Lanz Hits Special Chord With His Music
Seattle pianist David Lanz can’t easily disavow New Age music since he helped invent it, but he can help put it in perspective.
The term, he recently told an interviewer, was a convenient tag devised by the music industry to identify a kind of music that didn’t fit into any other category.
“It told people where they could find my music in a record store,” he said.
The drawback is that New Age is “not a musical term,” but “an attitude.”
“Actually,” he said, “I’m a contemporary classical/pop instrumentalist.”
Lanz has a great feel for marrying mood and melody to gently rocking rhythms, perhaps a reflection of the music his mother played at home. “She was my first musical influence. She played Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and Nat King Cole, which I thought was great.”
Over the past 10 years, Lanz has produced 12 albums and sold more than 4 million records, making him one of the most successful instrumental musicians of all time.
The bulk of his recordings feature him alone at the keyboard playing self-composed music. But he’s also recorded with collaborators, including his longtime friend and producer, guitarist Paul Speer, and, on a couple of occasions, with classical musicians.
Lanz even sang a couple tunes on his 1993 record, “Bridge of Dreams,” but has modest ambitions for his vocal skills.
“Once people think they have me figured out,” he said, “I like to change things.”
Born and raised in Seattle, Lanz took up pop music at a young age when he played bass clarinet in a Seattle rock band (the other kids really wanted a sax player, but didn’t know any). He played for a while in a progressive Vancouver, B.C., outfit called Brahman and did a solo club gig in Seattle where he brought jazz into the mix.
It was a fluke that brought him to New Age music.
“I created the music on my first record for a friend of mine. He was leading a seminar and wanted music to illustrate the chakras (the body’s energy centers). I made a little tape of it and everyone who heard it wanted it.”
It took him awhile to realize that his future lay in this new, impressionistic style of music rather than the pop songs he had been writing all his life.
“Finally, I realized that I’d hit a chord, so I started following the path. As I did, I realized, ‘Well, this is who I am.’ “
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: CONCERT David Lanz will perform at 8 p.m. Nov. 21 at The Met. Tickets are $21.50, available at G&B Select-a-Seat outlets or call (800) 325-SEAT.