Donal Fox is a national treasure, and we’re fortunate enough to be able to call him a local. The composer and pianist has written and performed symphonic and chamber music around the world. He was the first African-American composer in residence with the St. Louis Symphony, he premiered his works in venues ranging from Tanglewood to Carnegie Hall, and like America’s finest musicians and songwriters you can’t limit it to one. only kind.

In addition to what you might call his classical work, his group Inventions Trio play some of the most impressive jazz you can hear, while also covering the works of great composers dating back to the Baroque period – perhaps even earlier. .

Fox is giving a solo concert at GBH on Friday December 3rd. He spoke with GBH All things Considered host Arun Rath prior to the performance. This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Arun Rath: Tell us a bit about your local experience. Were you born in the greater Boston area?

Don Renard: Yeah, I was born here and then we went out when I was probably five or six in California, so I think I lost most of my Boston accent being there. Then we came back and I went through the Brookline school system.

Rath: How old were you, at what age or at what stage did you realize that you wanted to play and compose music?

Fox: You start early, at least with me, the first piano lessons. There was a lot of music in the house. My mom and dad both loved the arts. My father had actually studied musical composition before he got into physics, acoustic physics. I remember when I was a kid having a vinyl of Rite of Spring by Stravinsky, then I heard cantatas by Bach, then he had Monk, and then there was Miles Davis, Birth of the cold. So it all mixed up in my head at a very young age.

Rath: This is what we hear in your music. It’s great to hear. I mentioned that you are not limited by gender. The music you listened to as a youngster was also of all kinds. But I wonder – as you were developing as a young person, there is not so much diversity in the classical music ranks in America – was it difficult in the beginning not to be identified as a jazz pianist? ?

Fox: Yes. This divide is still there, it transcends cultural borders. The things that we struggle with as a society now is also in the realm of music. But very early on, we start with the classical piano. Improvisation I explored mine. I started to read about the great composers. You know, Beethoven was a great improviser, Bach and Mozart [too]. So I said, why can’t I improvise? Even before, I really focused on jazz as a jazz improviser. Of course, the piano teachers would go berserk. I was probably a teenager at the time, doing Beethoven sonatas, and I come and I warmed up playing a boogie-woogie on a sonata, and she screamed, “You can’t do that on my Steinway! ” So I just played it harder.

Rath: Some Beethovens sound like boogie-woogie.

Fox: It’s true. Some of the late Beethoven. It was a swaying cat, this Beethoven. So the idea of ​​improvisation is not just a genre. I mean, look at world music, in African music, Indian music – it’s everywhere. This is the way we normally speak as human beings. At birth, we learn words, pictures and sounds, and we don’t have to read right away. We learn to communicate through our language, and music is very similar that way. You know, the idea that you should be able to express your thoughts with sound. At first, you don’t necessarily need to have a lot of music theory, or how to hold your hands on the keys and get spanked if your finger sticks out a little too far. It’s not music, it takes away your creative process. So luckily, very early on, I realized that being creative and improvising, and that there was a story, was part of spontaneous composition, which led me to be a composer as well.

Rath: Do you have any idea of ​​- I don’t know, there might be almost the weight of the story, but also, where you are in it? Because as an African-American composer, besides the fact that your work is deep, it’s quite important. You’re in the line of people like William Grant Still – there’s that excitement of being able to enjoy your groundbreaking music, if that makes sense.

Fox: Yes of course. There is the socio-political aspect of making music that I do not avoid. I have a track called “Star Spangled Banner Fractured,” which kind of takes Jimi Hendrix, Charles Ives, and myself and mixes them up, and it scares people sometimes. Sometimes I put Chopin’s “Funeral March” in the middle. You can express a lot of different things. The expectations of being a black composer, that you only got to play one genre of music – for a long time, in fact, maybe until one of my major commissions at Tanglewood, I really didn’t talked about my jazz background, as it was used in a reverse racial sense: “Well, you’re a jazz musician, so I was happy that you were trying here with this classical composition”. And so, leaving that aside, they were forced – the critics, that is, and others – to watch music just for the sake of the music, and not try to paint simple stereotypes on it.

Rath: Some of your classical compositions that I think of, like the “Duetto for clarinet and piano”, there is nothing in it that screams African-American composer. It seems very much part of the tradition. It doesn’t call attention to itself that way, if that makes sense.

Fox: Alright Alright. I mean, you want to embrace the sounds that you hear that are part of your culture, of your experiences. Many young musicians feel more free to do so.

Rath: Tell us a bit about what we’re going to hear at the concert. A lot of your music that I’ve heard on record is mostly you with a trio or in larger contexts, but you’re going to be playing solo. So what are we going to hear?

Fox: So I try to create this theme, this musical fabric that speaks to itself, of the intrinsic quality of music and the way it is constructed. So I’m looking to open up at this point – they ask for a set list, and I usually just keep tinkering with things – but at this point it opens up with Gibbons, Orlando Gibbons. We’re talking about 1400, 1500. It’s amazing how free improvisation is with the Gibbons. Some pieces that I’m not going to improvise in a “jazz” style. That is to say, I am not going to add swing or brighten up the harmonies. But I improvise in the context of the Gibbons. This leads to a prelude by Bach, of which I am going to create a kind of new piece. You will certainly hear more jazzy and bluesy elements there. Next, I’m going to do a Duke Ellington piece called “Reflection in D”. Duke Ellington loved French music and he had a wide, broad palette, so I’m going to bring out sides of Ellington that could be French Impressionism. So I’m kind of showing different angles of the music that you think there’s a way to listen to them, but putting some things in the foreground and putting some things in the background and shifting the beat a bit, it’s like a prism or a cell phone. You see these different angles.