Still Rockin' It - Cheryl Lee
Join Cheryl Lee That Radio Chick on Still Rockin' It for news, reviews and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians.
What are they up to at the moment? Let's find out .......
Still Rockin' It - Cheryl Lee
What has Kym Purling been up to lately OR How to get from Adelaide to iconic stages all over the world and back again!?!
Join Cheryl Lee - That Radio Chick on STILL ROCKIN' IT for news, reviews, music and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians.
Today we chat with Australia's own prodigal son, internationally renowned Jazz pianist Kym Purling.
Kym, who has travelled the world playing with everyone who is anyone, playing for the Dalai Lama, opening for the who’s who of the music world and musical directing some of our favorite musicals, finds himself back in his home town of Adelaide due to love, family commitments and Covid.
Includes Songs:
Harry Connick Jr - (They Long to Be) Close To You
Kenny Loggins - Footloose
Natalie Cole & Kym Purling - It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
The Kym Purling Jazz Orchestra - 'Deed I Do
The Kym Purling Trio - Yesterday
What has Kym Purling been up to lately … let’s find out!
Get out when you can, support local music and I'll see you down the front!!
Visit: ThatRadioChick.com.au
That Radio Chick, cheryl Lee, here with you. Welcome to the Still Rocking it podcast, where we'll have news, reviews and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians and artists. Today, something a little different we chat with Australia's own prodigal son, international renowned jazz pianist, kim Perling. Kim, who has travelled the world playing with everyone who is anyone, including the Dalai Lama, opening for the who's who of the music world and musical directing some of our favourite musicals, finds himself back in his hometown of Adelaide due to COVID and family commitments. What is Kim Perling up to lately? Let's find out. You're with Cheryl Lee, that Radio Chick, and today, something a little bit different A jazz rock star with us today, kim Perling, australian pianist, entertainer, composer, conductor, producer, educator, world traveller and humanitarian. That is Alist Kim, born in Vietnam, adopted and raised in Australia. Perhaps you can tell us a little bit of your story. Where did it all begin?
Speaker 2:First of all, let me just say thank you for being entitled to Jazz Rockstar. I've never been called that before. Lovely to be here. Thanks, Shirley.
Speaker 1:Thank you for coming in. We really appreciate your time. World traveller, world renowned, back in our wonderful town of Adelaide. Where did it all begin for Kim?
Speaker 2:It began here and I've really gone a full circle because I've done lots of things in my career and come back here just a couple of years ago when COVID started. But I guess, if you want to go right back to the beginning, my story isn't very different to a lot of talented musicians. I guess we discover music at a very young age some of us and my sister was a teenager having classical piano lessons in the house and I was five years old and I was watching her from across the room and many times I assume, and when she'd finish practicing I would go up to the piano and reach up to the keyboard and play what she'd been playing by ear. So I would mimic what she'd been doing, not not a full concerto, but I could pluck out the melodies and somehow work it out at the piano.
Speaker 1:So you've obviously got a natural ear for music.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the ear is one thing. Because I was singing, I could sing relatively in tune as well. Mum and Dad had people at the house that thought that's not normal. But to actually translate it to the keyboard without any training, I think, was something that I thought was fairly special. And I think I've played other instruments as well, but piano was the one I felt most connected with, obviously from the very start.
Speaker 1:And you and your sister both adopted.
Speaker 2:Well, I've got two sisters and neither of them adopted. My brother was adopted.
Speaker 1:So there's four of you.
Speaker 2:Four of us. Well, my brother. We lost him. He was in a motorbike accident in Vietnam a few years ago, so that was a shame. But my two sisters are slightly older than me and they're Caucasian, biological homemade daughters to mum and dad. And then I was adopted during a Vietnam War two and a half years before the war ended. I'll just digress here, but mum and dad had been trying to adopt a child from the war two years before I was even born, in protest to the war and to help orphan, misplaced kids. So they finally they didn't.
Speaker 2:I was adopted and became the first international adoption in Australia the very first, apparently, so trendsetter you are and then, two years later, when I was two and a half, we adopted another, another baby, and he became my brother, michael, yeah are either of your sisters musical, they've continued on with music.
Speaker 2:I think my sister. After she watched me playing the piano and copying her, she took up the flute or something like that and that was the end of her piano playing days. Mum played a bit of piano before she got married. Dad played some guitar in the church. He's a United Church minister, retired now, and my sister is an actress and can sing a bit and my brother he this is a great story. He took up the guitar and I can't remember who the teacher was. But after a few lessons the teacher called mum and said oh, mrs pearling, I think your son michael isn't really into this because he he plays one or two chords, then looks at his watch and wants to go home.
Speaker 2:So no one really did it professionally. I was the only one that actually did anything substantial with the music so you've been all around the world.
Speaker 1:You've done some amazing, exciting things with some very, very high profile people. You must tell us all about what brought you back to Adelaide.
Speaker 2:COVID. Yeah well, I was doing a concert in New Zealand early 2020. I was based in Paris and New York. I've been based in those places for quite a while now, but I didn't want to go back to those bases with the way I was seeing COVID unfold in Europe and America, so I thought I'm really close to home. I'll just go and spend time with mum and dad and see my sisters. That's when we lost my brother, so I was meant to be back, and then mum was unwell for a while and dad has been unwell, and then I met my girlfriend on the golf course, so everything's sort of telling me to be here for now, and it's been good. It's a new chapter to my life at the moment, so in March it'll be three years. Welcome back.
Speaker 1:You originally educated at Westminster first and then Bachelor of Music in Jazz from the Uni of Adelaide. I've since then got a Master's, actually as well, yeah, in the US yeah clever cookie, one of the performing for the Dalai Lama. How did that happen?
Speaker 2:Oh, I don't really know how that happened. He called me up.
Speaker 1:No, hey Kim, how you doing.
Speaker 2:My pager went off. It said Dalai Lama, no. Back in the early 90s I was doing quite a few gigs in Adelaide. Some of it was in the corporate sector, some of it was in the government sector and some of it was private things and some of it was local establishments around town. And my trio were quite well known back in the 90s. I think we were doing over 250 gigs a year and I'm not lying, we were really busy. So part of that government stuff I think they said can you play for when the Dalai Lama comes to town. So I checked my diary and went, yes, OK, I'll move a few things.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So to answer that question, I guess a lot of things came to me because we were so active in the 90s.
Speaker 1:So that was actually here in Adelaide. Yeah, yeah, oh, amazing, I don't even remember where it is where it was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but we and government this and that and people coming to our state and things like that. So I had a good taste of all the avenues that we could be performing.
Speaker 1:You are listening to Still Rocking it the podcast with Cheryl Lee. We'll be back to speak some more to Kim Perling about his amazing overseas career, including his connection with Harry Connick Jr. In the meantime, let's have a listen to. They Long to Be Close to you.
Speaker 2:When I finished uni in 1992 I started a trio the one I was just talking about and I had a couple of different bass players in that during the time and I stayed for a period of six years. That's when we were gigging all over town. I had residencies at Stanford Plaza, stanford Grand, stanford, adelaide, which was the Intercontinental back then, and we had a little residency at Tapper's down in Rundle Street. On Friday nights from 11 till 2 in the morning that was a very, very popular place. Nights from 11 till 2 in the morning that was a very, very popular place.
Speaker 2:In 1998 I wanted to spread my wings and go to the us and I nearly moved to melbourne and I ended up being invited to teach at the university of nevada, las vegas, and do a master's degree. They call it a gradual assistantship, where you earn your masters and but you also teach a bit and do some other things. So I thought that's a great way to start my days in America and I can work out the rest and how to stay once I'm there. So that first chapter of America was in Vegas, affiliated with the university, doing that degree, but my real education was working in all the casinos and showrooms with all these great American artists and some non-American artists. So I found myself learning a lot more about the entertainment industry, rather than just the music industry and playing the piano.
Speaker 2:I was suddenly on stage with all these really good entertainers that knew how to put shows together and I was learning more about show business, I guess I could say so. Um, people like um baddie greco, the mills brothers, k star, clint holmes, michelle lagrand, oh so many great great paul lanka, so many great, great, great Paul Lenker, so many great great American artists coming through Vegas and with their own residencies and hotels around Vegas. So that was a really, really eye-opening experience for me but gave me the skills to be a better entertainer and performer. And, you know, I've realized I don't have to be just a pianist and play behind everyone else. I can actually do my own shows and that's how I started to cultivate my showmanship. I guess and and that performing side of being a musician and an entertainer well, putting those feathers in my cap as an entertainer that not a lot of musicians get the opportunity to learn or to even do what a fabulous schooling yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's as we know in this business show we, we learn on the job, don't we? Yeah? And to be thrown in the deep end on stage is night after night with these amazing artists with fantastic bands, because there were so business show, we learn on the job, don't we? And to be thrown in the deep end on stage is night after night with these amazing artists with fantastic bands, because there were so, so many, and continue to be, so many great artists and musicians in Las Vegas of really, really high standards. So for a little boy from Adelaide, that was that was a really eye-opening experience.
Speaker 2:At the time I was working with a singer that was backing vocalist for Wayne Newton and she knew that I wanted to spread my wings and eventually get out of this adult Disneyland in the middle of the desert. And she got a phone call from a theatrical company on Broadway in New York City saying that they've just sent out the national tour of Footloose, the musical. Do you know anyone that would like to come out and conduct the show? And she said, oh, my friend, kim would love to, and the show was already on the road. Tell out and conduct the show.
Speaker 1:And she said, oh, my friend kim would love to, and the show was already on the road I tell me if I'm talking too much.
Speaker 2:No, not at all. I love footloose, okay, yeah, so the national tour of footloose was I'm traveling around america and two weeks after they they got rid of the musical director and conductor I put. Well, she volunteered me. In the next few days later, with my las vegas apartment in disarray, I went, went to Wilmington, delaware, on the East Coast, and I met the company manager at one in the morning or something, in the hotel lobby, and all the cast and crew and actors and everyone were already asleep from the show, ready to get on the bus and go to the next town. And he gave me two massive binder folders of Act One and Act Two of the conductor score of Footloose, and I think it was Wednesday or Thursday. Surely, len you spy Footloose.
Speaker 1:And I think it was Wednesday or Thursday. Surely Lenny's by Friday. Yeah, he said.
Speaker 2:That's what he said. He said watch the conductor for the next two nights. Just start on Saturday night. Wow, and I've never seen these folders of music at all in my life and I just watched the conductor write down everything he did with his hands and all the set pieces that went by and all the cues from lights and props and stuff like that, and and props and stuff like that. And during the day I was in front of the mirrors in my hotel room with those folders on a music stand and headphones on, just waving my hands in the air trying to make everything look right. And I must have did something right because I took that show to 247 cities in 11 months. Far out, what another great schooling Across America.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'd never conducted any of the shows so I would talk myself and that led on to the next five-year chapter of conducting broadway shows and I was with miss saigon for two years and 42nd street and we took these shows to japan, america and around canada and it was yeah, there was, that was a whole nother skill that I had learned and taught myself and we're very much, much cherish because I have a love for musical theatre but never thought I could be in the orchestra conducting it.
Speaker 1:Still rocking the podcast with that radio chick, cheryl Lee. Back to speak some more with Adelaide's own world-renowned pianist, kim Perling. But any excuse to play the theme from Footloose. Here's Kenny Loggins.
Speaker 2:I ended up in Florida because of a relationship. After a couple of years we went together, but I ended up using Florida as a base. I was in Tampa, florida, and I had a trio there, two young guys from USF, the University of South Florida, two very talented bass players and bass player and drummer who was my American trio. Well, actually I had a trio in Las Vegas as well, so it's my second American trio. We were performing all around Florida. I did some concerts around America. I was doing some, uh, tv stuff for a network in in Florida and one of the great things that transpired out of my time there was through the TV network is that Natalie Cole was coming to town and again they asked me if I would be able to play with her and again check my dial.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, go, if she'd just put things around If I really had to.
Speaker 2:And this is a great story too.
Speaker 2:And just to give you an idea of how competitive and how on your toes you need to be in america is that I heard natalie's manager emailed me all the music for the show. It was a one hour tv christmas special, televised to 50 states around america and um, and because of that I thought I better learn this stuff off by heart, because I don't want to see a piano player on national tv turning pages playing behind the great natalie cole. So I learned all the music off by heart and I went to the studio three hours before the show and I never get that early to a gig, obviously, and musicians don't do that too and uh, and I and I got to the studio and then after and after a while they were putting lights at the piano and testing the sound of the piano and the mics and everything, and then the studio audience came in and then we had a break and then, before you know, it was creeping up to the two o'clock pm, time of the show and I think I was at the piano seated there for 15 minutes before the show and had still not even met natalie, yeah, and and then, finally, about two or three minutes before the hour, the studio manager yells out to the um production manager okay, we're ready for natalie. And the production manager yells out to natalie's manager okay, we're ready for Natalie. Natalie's manager yells out to Natalie's personal assistant we're ready for Natalie. And then, just minutes later, then she appears in this beautiful silvery gown and a glittering, uh, glitzy, microphone, and she came up to the stage but turned her back to me and faced the audience getting ready for the countdown to start the show. And then, just 30 seconds before she turns around and says oh, you're Kim, I'm natalie, nice to meet you. Studio manager goes three, two, one and then we're into it, oh gosh.
Speaker 2:And when you can see it on youtube. There's a few clips of it on youtube. You see, it looks like we've been working together for years. Yeah, pulled it off. Yeah, pulled it off, but it's just another thing, just another one of my favorite stories. Yes, it just demonstrates how on your toes you need to be and how prepared you need to be, because in the States there's a lot more piano players and capable ones to slip in there, right, if you screw up or you're not available. It's so competitive and such a high standard you know. So not as much here. Obviously, you are listening to.
Speaker 2:Still Rocking it the podcast with Cheryl Lee.
Speaker 1:Let's hear one of those songs sung at that performance Natalie Cole and Kim Perling with the seasonal song Most Wonderful Time of the Year. You've also performed with Frank Sinatra Jr, julio Iglesias, harry Connick Jr.
Speaker 2:We were open for Harry. I didn't actually play with him, yeah, same with Julio Frank Sinatra Jr. Yeah, that was in Vegas, too, working with him, and that was an amazing gig because we were playing all the original Nelson Riddle arrangements that Frank Sinatra did with Count Basie live at the Sands. It's an iconic album with this amazing Nelson Riddle, a big band and string arrangements, and we played all those that night and it was such a thrill to play with Frank's son and junior and be playing all these songs that I knew so well from this album.
Speaker 1:So these guys, they're all so lucky to have played with you.
Speaker 2:Well, I said that in an interview once I came back one year to Adelaide and between the two halves of the show I was at the Promethean I think it was about the 20th reunion of my trio and I'd come back and I thought I'll do this concert. And during the break, jan Darling with Jazz Action, we decided she would do an interview with me Before we started the second set so people could know what I've been telling you During my life Since leaving Australia and she goes, so you work with Natalie Cole. And I said, well, no, she tells people she worked with me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right, of course, Back in Adelaide you've got a residency here at Luigi's Delicatessen. Fabulous Italian food, by the way, on Franklin Street. How long have you been there?
Speaker 2:I guess it'll be two years in June. That was something that landed in my lap and I think Luigi and I both feel grateful to have met each other, because now, after a while, I realised that I was going to stay here and I had a good year off, at least, from working and just spending time in Adelaide with my family. But I thought, well, I probably need to pay some bills and do some work, do some work, yeah, so there was Nikki Kazumada.
Speaker 2:Who's this? Yes, you know Nikki. Yeah, she said to Luigi he must have been talking to her saying he wants to do live music. And she said, well, kim Perling's back in town and she arranged us to meet. And so I went over there and he told, yeah, I want to get a piano and he have some live music. I thought, perfect. So I found luigi, this grand piano in a house in elizabeth. I looked for a few different ones and then found this one in elizabeth and it was owned by a woman who was a piano teacher and the piano sat in the same corner of the same room of the same house for 35 years and it was tuned regularly. No one was allowed to touch it. The kids and grandchildren weren't allowed to touch it. Unfortunately, she went into a home and their two daughters were selling everything in their house. So we gave her a small sum and then put the piano in there.
Speaker 2:I think it was on a Tuesday or Wednesday and that following weekend I started playing with upright bass players and swinging jazz songs every Friday and Saturday. We haven't turned back since. So it's been a great gig for me because it's kept me playing and there's been a place that my Adelaide audience, which is still well intact, are coming out of the woodwork and coming to hear me play there, as well as the few concerts I do at various places around the city and things like that. So it's been really good. So please go to luigidellycom and click on, book a Table and I'm there playing solo Thursdays from 6.45 to 9.45 and then 7 to 10 on Friday and Saturdays with various bass players that play with me. People are really loving it there. It gives a sort of feeling of sense of Europe and a New York or whatever.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's a beautiful vibe, even at lunchtime. It is a lovely piano, really nice. Find out when and where you're playing by going onto Luigi's Facebook page or website. Do you have one? And Instagram?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I put all my stuff on Facebook. So if you go to Kim Perling account one, generally I put everything I'm doing concert dates and things like that and then Luigi dates and who's playing with me on those nights, so people can always know what I'm up to there. Yeah, but Luigi Deli Instagram page is fairly active. There's a lot of stuff that they put on there, yeah.
Speaker 2:Is it three albums. I think it's more than that. Oh yeah yeah. The first one was trio juice. That was in 1994 and that was my first album, and my bass player, james clark at the time, recorded that too, so he was in another room pressing buttons and playing the bass. I was on another one and then I was on a compilation. Then I did one with katherine lambert katherine lambert, the kim perling trio and then, the year before leaving to go to America, I did another Trio album to sort of wrap up my time here with the Trio and have something for them to say while I go away.
Speaker 1:Is that let's Swing.
Speaker 2:That's, let's Swing, yeah, yeah, that's right yeah and so they can find them.
Speaker 1:Links to those at the Facebook page as well. Um, no, they'll have to get a bootleg copy.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, yeah, well, yeah, I need to record again and I've done various recordings while in America, but I never like what I do. So those that are lucky to get these recordings from the you know secret recordings are very lucky. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So is that a scoop that one day soon there might be a new album coming out? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think I'll record while I'm here. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think what would be great you could do a live album, Live at Luigi's.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I actually prefer recording live.
Speaker 1:You can pay me later.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, because I just like the feeling of playing live and the performance and the energy that you get from the audience, so I think we will do that actually, well, that sounds like a good title.
Speaker 1:Live at will. Do that? Actually, well, that sounds like a good title. Live at the weegies. Yeah, absolutely, you would love that you heard it here first. Yeah, yeah, still rocking the podcast with that radio chick, cheryl lee. Time to hear some of that amazing music from the kim pearling jazz orchestra in the usa. Did I do back more with kim very shortly after the florida chapter?
Speaker 2:I was on the road as ingelbert humperdinck's musical director and conductor. Well, most people over 50 know who ingelbert humperdinck is you're asking millennials.
Speaker 2:They look blankly at me in the face. I, I seem to slip in when other musicians get fired because Inglebert let go of his pianist and conductor and musical director and a guy that I knew in Florida who had worked for him as an MD for years previous. They called him to see if he'd want to go out on the road but he had a woman and dogs and stuff and couldn't get away. Eddie Tobin his name is, and Eddie used to come to my concerts in Florida and he knew that I'd conduct their Broadway shows. He recommended me to go to Inglebert. And so there's another story where just days later I was in the Hard Rock Casino Hotel in Hollywood, Florida, and conducted my first show with Inglebert without a rehearsal with the band.
Speaker 1:Lucky, you're a fast learner.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you really have to do your homework before you get on stage with these people. So I worked with him for a couple of years in all the major concert halls around the world and a lot of england we did a big uk tour as well, so and playing robert hall. So I played all these amazing concert halls, which I wouldn't have done without having worked with him. So that was one chapter and then another thing I wanted to do when I finished with him. I had the travel bug and I wanted to see more of the world and so I thought maybe I should check out cruise ships because I realized that they were guest entertainers on cruise ships and not a lot of people know that because they only know the musicians that work on the ships as the in-house band.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to supplement the on-board entertainment program on cruise lines, they bring what we call guest entertainers on, people that have careers on land to supplement the gaps where they don't have enough shows. If the cruise is three weeks long and they've only got four or five shows that the entertainment team land to supplement the gaps where they don't have enough shows. If the cruise is three weeks long and they've only got four or five shows that the entertainment team do and then the cruise director does a show and a band does a show. There's still some gaps. So they bring people like us on board to do shows and that has been really great too, because it's a great way to see the world.
Speaker 2:I get paid really well to go onto these ships and the ships I go on I have guest status on and so I get given and they're all the high-end luxury five, six star lines, so they give me a key to these beautiful state rooms. I travel with the ship generally a few weeks, sometimes two weeks, and I'll do one or two nights of shows on board during the week. The rest of the time I have off to do in the pool cocktails.
Speaker 2:Well, I well really to go ashore and discover these places around the world. And if you combine what I've done with ships to what I did with Inglebert and other world travel, I've travelled now to 144 countries around the world. Oh, wow, you mentioned the humanitarian work I do. I've always had a little bit of that in me from my parents. But after seeing so much of the world and taking a real interest in some of the poorer cultures around the world, I realised OK, I'm established as a musician, I can pull an audience and there's no reason why a couple of times a year I can't do a concert where I don't charge a fee and I give the money to charity.
Speaker 2:So I started doing that with a few Vietnamese organisations and I did a concert in Florida while there. That was one of the first ones I did, feeding 2,000 children in Nepal. And then, of course, when the Nepalese earthquakes happened some years ago, I did a concert to raise money for the victims of the earthquake. And then everything seems to be pointing to Nepal as one of the very few places I haven't been, and Emma Taylor, who's a friend of mine, that I met at a church camp in my teens. We lost touch and then reconnected in our I guess it was in our 40s. She is an amazing woman who started the Sunrise Children's Association in Nepal.
Speaker 2:I've heard of them, yeah, her office is in North Adelaide, I think, but she's over there on the ground in Nepal, yeah, helping thousands of children and families, bringing illegally trafficked kids and kids in illegal orphanages back to their parents, helping them with small grants to start their own businesses and stuff.
Speaker 1:So I've been to a fundraiser. It is.
Speaker 2:It's an amazing one last year at burnside. Uh no, it was a couple of years ago but yeah, she does amazing work, yeah I was there. I was there tonight. Yeah, the one at burnside, yeah, I'm really proud to be associated with her and I need to do something again for her. But that humanitarian thing is something that I feel very committed to, even though I have I need to do more.
Speaker 1:I love it when I hear about successful musicians, successful people giving back.
Speaker 2:Thank you, that's amazing yeah, well, the reason is, and we haven't talked about this, and I'm really good talking on the radio that's all right, I'm good at filling the time.
Speaker 2:Uh, I was actually found with no known parents, abandoned, during the vietnam war when I was only two or three days old. I did touch on a bit before so, knowing that I was taken out of a war zone and brought to australia and had been given lots of love and support and opportunities, I never, ever forgot where I came from, and so I wanted to want to give that back to to other other children.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let me know if you need any help.
Speaker 2:Okay, I will. I will, I will Thank you.
Speaker 1:It's fabulous to hear your story and it's fabulous to have you back here in Adelaide. So do get onto the Google-o-meter, get down to Luigi's on a night that you can see Kim and I shall see you down the front.
Speaker 2:Okay, every Thursday, friday and Saturday from about 7 to 10, I'm there, I really enjoy it and I hope to see some more of you over there too, and thanks very much for talking with me today.
Speaker 1:Thank you for coming. We'll leave you with Yesterday by the Kim Perling Trio live at La Grande Hall a live concert of unplanned sets and completely improvised music, also with Alejandro Arenas and Mark Feynman. You're with Cheryl Lee, that radio chick. Thank you so much for joining me on the Still Rocking it podcast. Hope to catch you again next time. Get out when you can support Aussie music and I'll see you down the front.