John Bickerton, Composer, Pianist

Background

Born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada in 1959, John Bickerton began studying piano at age six, under the direction of the nuns at St. Mary’s Academy. The family later moved to Morristown, New Jersey in 1972.  John’s musical commitment blossomed in Morristown.  In high school, he formed his first jazz groups.

He would study music composition with Leonardo Balada at Carnegie-Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA), BFA 1982, and with David Del Tredici, Charles Fussell, and Theodore Antoniou at Boston University, MFA, 1984.  

Moving to New York City in 1984, John pursued work as a freelance composer and jazz pianist.

I was self-taught as a jazz pianist.  There were a few books that showed voicings back then but the whole jazz education explosion had not happened yet.  One night, in my first week in New York City, I was thumbing through the Village Voice and I couldn’t believe it, there was an ad for lessons with Joanne Brackeen (I love NY).  I called her immediately and we would go on to have lessons on and off for several years, mostly dictated by her touring schedule. She was such a warm, excellent teacher.  She would build confidence but also challenge at the same time.  “Your ears are ahead of your hands” she’d say wanting me to build piano technique.

 

I started playing small jazz gigs in Manhattan every couple of months.  Through this circuit, I was lucky to become the featured pianist at a small bar that was just beginning to have music.  The club was called Caliban at 26th St. and 3rd Ave, it was a neighborhood bar really.  I played there, with trios, quartets even quintets sometimes 3 times a week, It was an invaluable experience for a young pianist. I played with Valery Ponomarev, Hide Tanaka, Steve Johns, Junior Cooke, Eddie Henderson, the drummer Frank Bambara, bassist Calvin Hill, the free jazz saxophonist Booker T. Williams, and Cecil Taylor alum, Rashid Bakr.

 

As a composer at this same time I wrote music for some off-Broadway theater productions, mainly for the Primary Stages theater company.  During this period I supported myself with a “day job” as a long-term temp in accounting in a division of AIG, the insurance company that would later feature so heavily in the 2008 subprime loan/default swap crisis.  I was there long before that, however. 

Influences

He has been inspired by Eastern-influenced, tonal composers like Alan Hovhaness, and Lou Harrison but also avant-garde composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen and the New York School composers – John Cage, Morten Feldman, Earle Brown, and Christian Wolff.

Melody alive in abstract sound worlds is a way to describe his music – a combination of the tonality of folk music with atonality.

He finds inspiration in visual artists like Joseph Cornell and Jean Michel Basquiat, whose individual search for what is unique in art, he admires, and he is ever moved by a handful of inspired jazz improvisers. 

Bickerton explains: “My improvisational influences – Ornette Coleman, Geri Allen, Andrew Hill, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Keith Jarrett, Henry Threadgill – have all established their own distinct personality in jazz. How they phrase inside the time gives them their voice. How do these musicians play with the rhythm section? Do they phrase evenly through the measure? Do they play against the time? Behind it? Contrary to it? All these things define a personal voice in music. In a way, it’s the ultimate goal of a musician to find this voice, this personal expression. The power of improvisation is in its immediacy – you can hear the very moment of creation, and that energy is what carries the music.”

What do you enjoy most? Writing music or performing your music live?

That’s hard because there is much to love about both. I guess these days I would say writing music. It’s what I’ve been spending most of my time doing. As a pianist, performing is the ultimate experience though. I don’t know if most people realize how important, or magical the loop between audience and performer is at a club or concert. A concert is a ‘heightened-sense event’, it is a social event where people come to share in what is a miraculous thing – the making of music – essentially sound waves enter us through our bodies and then pull out feelings or an elevated consciousness, however you’d like to describe it. It’s this invisible thing that has a profound effect. You can have that experience through earbuds on your phone but when one is part of that performer-audience live loop, that’s something that can’t be recreated on a recording.   – John Bickerton, Interview Secret Eclectic 2002

For 20 years, from 1998 to 2018, John Bickerton owned and managed his own business.  The UniqueTracks Production Music Library Inc. owned or managed the synchronization rights for a collection of over 3000 recordings.  It licensed this music for use in film, video, games, apps, and advertising.  At one time, the company held the largest selection of stock classical music recordings available worldwide. 

UniqueTracks licensed music to thousands of media production companies including Disney, FOX, ABC, PBS, the Cooking Channel, the Sundance Channel,  the Outdoor Channel, the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, NBC Sports, CBS Sports, FremantleMedia as well as corporate clients like Coca-Cola, E-Trade, IBM, Merrill Lynch, Marriott, Pfizer, Merck, Hallmark, Saatchi & Saatchi, Fidelity, and Johnson & Johnson.

John closed the business at the end of 2018 intent on re-entering the music world as a composer and performer.  “I found out that it was nearly impossible to manage a healthy business and also be a working musician.  This is probably obvious to most folks but I kept trying to circle back to making music and it just never happened.  I enjoyed the business, I especially enjoyed the interaction with customers but after 20 years I felt it was time to devote myself again to making music.