FROM THE COVER: Corky Siegel Takes the Blues to Another Place

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FROM THE COVER: Corky Siegel Takes the Blues to Another Place
April 28, 2009
By Michael C. Moore
Kitsap Sun

One thing immediately becomes clear in dealing with Corky Siegel — for a man of his credentials, he doesn't take himself all that seriously.

"After you read up on me a little," Siegel said early in a phone conversation from his Chicago home, "you might decide you don't want to write about me after all."

Just the opposite. The more you know about Siegel — who brings his group Corky Seigel's Chamber Blues to Bremerton May 4 under the auspices of the West Sound Entertainment Association, the finale of that body's 2008-09 subscription season — the more you want to know.

Chamber Blues is, simply, an amalgam of classical and blues musical elements. The band of the same name includes himself (harmonica and keyboards) world-music drummer Frank Donaldson and a string quartet — violinists Aurelien Pederzoli and ChiHsuan Yang, violist Doyle Armbrust and cellist Jill Kaeding.

Since the mid-1960s, when he fronted the legendary Siegel-Schwall Band that rose to international prominence out of the Chicago blues scene, Siegel has been credited as the inventor of Chamber Blues. However, he said, the genre "was neither my idea nor my fault.

"Back in 1966, we're playing at Big John's (where Siegel-Schwall replaced Paul Butterfield as the house band)," Siegel recalled. "This Japanese fellow, who's been in a few times, comes up and says he wants his band to jam with our band."

The Japanese fellow turned out to be Seiji Ozawa, and the "band" was the Chicago Symphony he was leading at the time as conductor and music director. The resulting collaborations put Siegel-Schwall — already known and respected worldwide for their part in the revival of interest in the blues — on a whole different continent of the world music map.

It was also the beginning of Siegel's immersion in the combination of blues and classical musics — an amalgam that, to many, sounds impossible, but to Siegel is as natural as "breathing in and breathing out.

"It's been really fun and enjoyable, but I never really fell in love with it until 1983, when the City of San Francisco commissioned me to write a piece for the San Francisco Symphony. I wrote my first composition for a symphony." From there, "I started exploring the juxtaposition as a composer, and I fell in love with it.

"I love the blues completely," he continues. "I was raised by these guys (he ticks off a who's who of blues icons who Siegel-Schwall played with as the house band at Chicago's Pepper's Lounge, including Willie Dixon, Little Walter, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf) ... I learned from them."

With Chamber Blues, he said, "I just took it to another place."

Siegel's blues cred is undeniable. With Siegel-Schwall, he toured the world, headlining bills that included rising superstars like Santana and Janis Joplin, and held court with blues cognoscente on their home turf in Chicago. As Lin Brehmer, music director for Chicago's WXRT Radio, summarized: "For groups like the Rolling Stones, names like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf were exotic inspirations. For Siegel-Schwall they were the guys that played with them on 43rd Street."

The resume he's built as a symphony-blues and chamber blues composer and performer is no less impressive. He's written for and played with numerous symphonies, had his work choreographed by international ballet companies and had his music used in television and motion pictures. Appropriately, the innovative and groundbreaking ice dancing team of Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean favored his music for their routines.

And he still likes taking Chamber Blues to the people — especially people who have no idea what to expect.

"When we're playing for people who've never heard us before, we get to sit and watch them get blown away," he said.

"What the (Chamber Blues) experience is showing you ... is that there is no such thing as a classical purist," Siegel continued. "Some people think, if something isn't 'this,' then I'm not going to enjoy it. Well, the world doesn't work like that, and this shows you that.

"It's liberating," he said, "in that it frees you from the confines of musical genre."