Ayo Bankole: If I’m to Play for any World Leader, it Has to be Barack Obama

There’s just something about Ayo Bankole’s playing that strikes you. A virtuoso amongst those of the highest calibre. He’s almost incredibly unassuming and modest. In some ways, just the guy next door. You would never know you were in the company of a master pianist until he starts playing.

 

Then you know just who you are dealing with. He has been called Nigeria’s Jamie Oliver of the grand piano because of his mission to bring classical music back to the masses. Ayo Bankole Jnr. is one of Nigeria’s frontline pianists who has built a reputation for captivating audiences with his unfailing musical authority and natural virtuosity. Very well known to connoisseurs of the piano, his highly-praised recordings cover album projects, recitals and the soundtrack on Channels Television. As a child at 12, he had started composing, arranging, producing and performing at concerts and recital.  After his recent MUSON Centre concert that included his compositions played on the world’s best and most expensive piano, Adedayo Adejobi sat down with the pianist to discuss his career as a pianist, his dreams, the contemporary piano tradition, his own interpretative style, the Ayo Bankole Centre for Arts and Cultural Expression which is developing and propagating music and the arts appreciation to the general public mainly through youth -driven programming. It is Bankole at his best…

When the Piano Speaks Your Language…
When Ayo Bankole begins to play the piano, everything suddenly makes sense. The Nigerian classical music impresario cannot quite find the words to say what he means in English, so he reaches for the keys of a Steinway piano close by. His fingers fluttering through a breathtakingly beautiful passage of Ravel and his meaning becomes clear: this music is not work to him but a means of escape, from the difficulties of language, from his relentless touring schedule and from all the people who want a piece of the Ayo Bankole brand.

“Through piano, a lot of people can start to understand what I am thinking,” he reckons.

It was his escape from the fierce pressure put on him as a small child, a tiny prodigy carrying the weight of his parents’ hopes and dreams and forced to practise scales and exercises for hour after hour. As a pianist, his father was a brutal taskmaster. One of the most famous concert pianist and classical musicians on the black planet.

‘‘My father started me on the piano and I had to practice in order to do the assignments he’d give me, but because I’ve always liked music I’d spend a lot of my own time playing and practicing things I wanted to do. Also as a child, I frequently suffered fairly severe asthma attacks. One of the consequences of my asthma was that any time I had an attack I’d be stuck in one place for hours at a time, struggling with my breathing. I spent a lot of this illness imposed ‘down time’ at the piano trying out all sorts of ideas,’’  Bankole enthuses.

And the Journey Takes Shape at Age 12…
It’s hard not to be a little awestruck by the breadth of Ayo Bankole’s passions, to say nothing of his talents. In addition to being a pianist of uncommon depth and sensitivity, Ayo is also an increasingly visible composer, an art collector, and a deft and imaginative writer.

Giving a peep into a future he envisioned and his musical journey which started at age 12, he says: “I’ve been performing at concerts and recitals since when I was 12, and throughout my student days at secondary school and university I’d regularly organise and participate in musical events of various genres. I had known from an early age that I’d have a career in music. However, because I was equally at home composing, performing, arranging and producing I never limited myself to one area of specialisation.’’

Call him a renaissance man, a polymath or a genius. His recent MUSON Centre recital is simply one of the most interesting musicians around. He feels a bit like a book of preludes rather than a book of Beethoven sonatas. ‘‘What I love in a piece like that is how sparklingly diverse it is; you’ll have this piece of incredible tenderness which is heartbreaking and then it will burst into something that is like slapstick humor. That kind of quirkiness appeals to me in many ways.”

One of the many interesting things about Bankole Jnr. is that those “quirky” intellectual pursuits arose in someone who knew from a very early age that he wanted to dedicate his life to music. When he was five, he found that he could pick out nursery rhymes he knew on his father’s piano. ”
Asked when he knew he wanted to be a pianist, Ayo answered: “I think from day one that’s what I wanted to do.”

Yet his career path was anything but straightforward. Despite his early enthusiasm for the piano, one thing he always enjoyed and did well, even in those early years, was writing. He thinks of his current literary pursuits, in addition to repertoire notes, he has begun work on a memoir of his early years as a way of recapturing the explorations he’d forgone earlier.

Understanding the Intricacies and the ‘Mystics’…
While there are all sorts of fascinating comparisons and diversions to be made between the composers’ songs, the most important aspect of the entire programme is that “it’s so gorgeously written for the instrument.  He understands the piano as well as anyone who’s ever written for it; how chords ring on the instrument, how overtones work, how the spacing of chords works, where you place the third, so that it doesn’t become muddy and is always transparent.

When Ayo sits down, and from the very first bar to the end, you can’t but just enjoy how it feels to play this music on the keyboard. Telling of what he likes about being on stage, these words resonate:

“There’s a way great music and a great performance can affect the mood of people taking them to another dimension, especially when the whole show is well conceived and executed. I want people to have an almost mystical experience. This is what I like doing across the different platforms I perform. I generally play classical, folk, classics, light jazz, contemporary and fusion as a solo pianist and also as part of a group or ensemble (from a trio all the way to a mid-sized orchestra). I also like conducting an orchestra.’’         

For a pianist who practices regularly, he describes his piano in these words: “the piano is a very cruel master and I’m just a slave. If you can’t find the time to practise, the piano will embarrass you. On most days I try to get a minimum of two hours of practice, but sometimes I can put in five hours.”

And that Channels TV Theme Song…
When asked what he was thinking as he composed and produced the Channels Television Theme ‘Ise Oluwa’, he was quick to take the reporter down memory lane in his answer.

“The original ‘Ise Oluwa’ was composed by T.K.E. Phillips long before I came into this world, so I really can’t claim the credit for composing it. However, I based my arrangement and production of the Channels TV signature tune on this much loved Yoruba song. Uppermost on my mind at the time was the idea of using a typical Yoruba folk tune as the basis for developing a big orchestral fanfare in the manner of the opening montages for big Hollywood film productions such as Star Wars. At the time I produced the theme, there weren’t any good orchestras of note in the country. In any case, even if there was a good orchestra available, it would have been highly unlikely that I’d have been given the funding to hire it. I therefore set about achieving the orchestral textures I wanted by playing synthesiser parts in layers in the same way various sections of a real orchestra are blended together. These were the early days of multi-timbral synthesis. So I had a lot of fun experimenting with various instruments in order to achieve my ‘orchestral’ sound.”

And for a well-travelled musician, if he has the opportunity to meet and perform alongside a global pianists, they would it be Chinese classical pianist, Lang Lang and jazz legend, Herbie Hancock. But If it were a celebrity or global figure, it would it be America’s President Obama, “because he loves music and has a great singing voice.”

‘I Teach My Kids Music…’
When quizzed If music is a profession he’ll be willing to pass down to his children, he replied saying: “I teach my children music because that will stay with them as a hobby throughout their lives. However, the choice of a career is a personal decision.”
The teacher in Ayo Bankole is revealed in these words: “I had my first piano students when I was about 12 years and I’ve been teaching ever since.”

Teaching the piano has left him with this foundation. ‘‘When you teach a subject or skill, as a teacher you are constantly forced to examine and re-examine your knowledge of what you pass on to your students. Most students in their enthusiasm to learn are in such a mad rush to run that they don’t even learn how to walk properly. If we apply this to learning a musical instrument, we find that many students will pick up bad habits and a flawed technique which will prevent them from reaching proficiency. As a teacher, you want your students to be excited by what they are learning but you also want them to learn progressively without killing their enthusiasm. So, as a teacher you want to give the student a solid foundation that if need be can be developed on by other teachers, and also teach the student skills that can be useful to him in whatever direction he chooses to grow.’’

Having played for years, could his piano playing have changed over the years? “I believe I my playing has matured in the sense that I aim at capturing the essence of the composition and what the composer intended rather than just the mere expression of my technique on the work.”    `

When the question  as to whether listening and not playing makes one better piano player, as the norm is in this part of the clime, these were his exact words: “Babies learn their mother tongue by listening to others speaking the language and then trying to copy. As they practice mimicking what they’ve heard, they start to get better at speaking. The same principle applies to music as a language. Critically listening to music and analysing what you’ve heard helps you develop a sophisticated inner ear and a sense of aesthetics. While you are practising you are striving to raise your performance level to match your aesthetics. In the cause of this struggle your playing is continuously improving.”

A Foundation to Give Back to the Society…
Away from playing the piano, rehearsing, producing and traveling across the globe, he finds time to spearhead as the chief executive officer of the Ayo Bankole Centre for Arts and Cultural Expression, ABC, an initiative which is developing and propagating music and the arts appreciation to the general public mainly through youth driven programming. In the recent past, this non-governmental organisation has had successful collaborations with the British Council, the Goethe Institut as well as with theatre directors such as Femi Oke and Segun Adefila. The ABC also regularly holds various types of live music performances.

“Over the coming months I’ll be producing a couple of very talented Nigerian singers. I’m also freeing up time for teaching and performance.”

Practise, practise, practise and then practise some more are the important words the renowned pianist has for any young pianist that wants to be a performer willing to follow in his footsteps. And that is the main reason that when he cannot find the right words to convey his thoughts, his piano speaks the language his audience always understands. The language of consonance in orchestral symphony.