Fred Kaz

[Joe]

The pianist, not Fred Katz, the cellist.

A rather limited discography, with but one leader date that I've heard: EASTERN EXPOSURE on Atlantic Records. On the evidence of this date, a rather unusual player, whose "moves" sometimes recall a much more fluent Brubeck, or an even more oddball Eddie Costa; certainly, he wasn't without harmonic imagination and a pretty individual sense of phrasing. Still, its hard sometimes to separate out "gimmick" from invention on this particular record... a shame, perhaps, that he did not record as frequently as he might have.

In my search for more information, though, I discovered that Mr. Kaz was the long-time musical director for Chicago's Second City.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-03-12/entertainment/chi-fred-kaz-legendary-musical-director-at-second-city-dies-20140312_1_fred-kaz-second-city-actor-richard-kind

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-12-18/entertainment/8802250816_1_musical-director-piano-player-second-city

And, although Mr. Kaz is no longer with us, his website still is, and it looks as though there are more records to hear after all:

http://www.fredkaz.com/music.html

given the strong Chicago presence on this board, I wonder if there might be more insights, opinions, and memories to share.

Edited March 10, 2015 by Joe

[Larry Kart]

Have and enjoy "Eastern Exposure," but don't think I ever ran across Kaz except at Second City, where I heard him quite often (I reviewed at lot of shows there in the 1980s for the Chicago Tribune).

A Kaz story. There was a terrific Second City skit titled "Walnut Room," set in the Marshal Fields department store restaurant of that name. Mary Gross played a flaming bitch of a mother, Lance Kinsey was her young son, and Jim Belushi was a bystander at a nearby table. Kinsey wanted to go to a movie, Gross was giving him a brutally hard time, and Belushi was taking this in until he decided to play Robin Hood. Oozing macho charm, he approached Gross with a sub rosa offer to leave the restaurant with him and indulge in an afternoon quickie, and after some coy byplay she agreed. Then, as Gross and Belushi get up to leave, he takes Kinsey aside and whispers, "Here's fifty bucks, kid -- run away from home."

I did a story for the paper about how that skit was created. About six months before the show, Gross had observed a mother behaving at the Walnut Room much as Gross does in the skit. She, Belushi, and Kinsey worked on the skit for a long time before getting it onstage, mostly because Second City's Bernie Sahlins hated skits with kids in them; he thought they got cheap laughs. (Belushi also had a hard time getting into his part because it was almost all reactions, while Gross was having a grand old time playing a kind of suburban Lady Macbeth.) What clinched it for the skit was the "Here's fifty bucks, kid" line. That was Kaz's contribution, something he'd once actually said to a kid at a party when Kaz saw him being beaten up emotionally by his parents.

[Joe]

Thanks for sharing that Larry.

My wife is currently taking improv (comedy) classes here in Dallas, and talking with her about that experience has renewed my appreciation for improvisation as an "general aesthetic." (This study, while a bit less in-depth than I would have liked, still makes for fine reading on this topic: Daniel Belgrad's The Culture of Spontaneity.) Kaz, like Del Close and the Beck / Molina axis of The Living Theatre, is a fascinating figure in that he seems to bridge a couple of different improvisational media.

[clifford_thornton]

That's some funny stuff - thanks Larry.

I have the Atlantic LP and it's a real strong set.

[JSngry]

Ultra-tangentially, on some (all?) of the old Second City LPs I have, the Musical Director was Bill Mathieu.

[Joe]

Ultra-tangentially, on some (all?) of the old Second City LPs I have, the Musical Director was Bill Mathieu.

Intriguing, this Kenton - Terry Riley - Second City connection!

Looks like Kaz very likely replaced Mathieu, who moved to San Francisco in the 60's, at least as best I can determine. And thus the seeding of Second Citys commenced...