Pianist Jody Graves includes humor, stories in performances

Anticipation of a piano concert usually conjures images of a musician dressed in black, seated at a grand piano in a darkened hall that is completely silent, save for the melody.

Jody Graves, who will perform at in Cape Girardeau later this month, wants people to know that's not what they will see when they see her play.

"I'm a person who tries to bridge that gap between the edge of the stage and the beginning of the audience, so it's not a big, dark concert in black where everyone sits quietly and doesn't know what to do," Graves said.

Instead of just playing the music, she talks about the pieces, too.

"I lace my passages with stories and humor and laughter," she said.

The program is called "Myths and Memories."

"There are stories with all the pieces, of course; there always are," she said.

Her repertoire ranges from Gershwin to Beethoven.

She has played "Rhapsody in Blue" with symphony orchestras but said she has an affinity for Rachmaninoff and Brahms.

Graves has four CDs. The most recent one, "Ananda: Notes from the Heart," released in May, contains some of her favorite Brahms works.

Some have referred to her as "Victoria Borge," a reference to the great Victor Borge, a 20th-century Danish pianist and conductor whose comedic style of performing earned him the nickname "the Clown Prince of Denmark."

"I tend to play shorter works and sprinkle them with stories and fun and sometimes questions, because people are interested, but they are afraid to ask," Graves said. "As artists and performers, we have to be open and welcoming."

She calls her show "interactive," and she means it.

"I very likely will include a moment when someone from the audience comes up and plays something with me," she said.

Graves is director of Piano Studies at Eastern Washington University in Cheney and also has traveled extensively performing around the world.

She has served as a cultural ambassador in the Middle East, playing concerts in the Persian Gulf and the West Bank.

"We only see that side of the world through the media and military," she said. "There's a whole other side of things going on over there."

The two-hour show culminates with a multimedia display of images related to the piano.

"It's got funny pictures," she said. "It's got all different kinds of scenarios where the piano finds itself in every aspect of our lives and we don't even realize it."

Some of those images include one of a piano surrounded by soldiers on a World War II gunship, another of a piano in a little barn in a cotton field in the south, and of the "Play Me" pianos that have cropped up across the country during the last decade.

"People have sort of dressed up old pianos and put them out on the street," Graves said. A sign that says, "Play Me" tempts people to sit down and peck out a tune.

In addition to being a performer and professor, Graves also is a public speaker, and talks about the importance of music in our culture.

"Musicians and artists of all kinds -- dancers, poets, writers -- are at the center point of our culture, not the periphery," she said. "What we do as expressive artists has helped define and articulate the condition of the human spirit, and we need that more than ever now, especially in the age of virtual life, where people live in front of a screen."

Jody Graves will perform at 3 p.m. Oct. 25 at the River Campus. Tickets are $10.

For more information about Graves, visit drjodygraves.com.

Pertinent address:

518 S. Fountain St., Cape Girardeau, Mo.