Fred Kaz

Fred Kaz
Background information
Born	Frederick R. Kaz (1933-12-28)December 28, 1933 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died	March 12, 2014(2014-03-12) (aged 80) San Pedro, California, U.S.
Genres	Jazz
Occupations	Pianist, composer, musical director
Instrument	Piano
Label	Atlantic

Frederick R. Kaz (December 28, 1933 – March 12, 2014) was an American jazz pianist, composer and musical director. He recorded the album Eastern Exposure for Atlantic Records in 1960 and later became the longtime musical director of the Chicago improvisational theater The Second City. His responsive accompaniment helped shape the pacing and tone of the company's improvised scenes. Kaz also composed the scores for the films The Monitors (1969) and Little Murders (1971).

Early life and jazz career

Kaz was born in Chicago. In his late teens, he studied composition and piano at the music school of DePaul University, intending to pursue a career as a classical pianist. While working at a paper-box factory, his left hand was caught in a machine, which amputated one finger and part of another and seriously injured the rest of the hand. The accident ended his plans for a classical concert career.

After initially believing that he could no longer perform professionally, Kaz turned to jazz, which allowed him to choose the distribution of notes rather than reproduce written classical chords. He developed techniques that accommodated his injured hand, including repeated notes that created the impression of a sustained swell, clusters followed by selected held notes, slides and accented grace notes. In a 1962 profile, Down Beat writer Gene Lees described these devices as elements of a highly individual and recognizable style and reported that Kaz was one of Chicago's most respected pianists.

On March 25, 1960, Kaz recorded Eastern Exposure in New York with bassist Victor Sproles and drummer Roger Wanderscheid. Released as Atlantic LP 1335, the album drew upon Near Eastern musical ideas and included the tracks "Muezzin", "Fez", "Turkish Blues" and "One White Whale". Lees wrote that Kaz's playing combined rhythmic drive with an experimental approach to the piano and quoted arranger Bill Mathieu on Kaz's influence on his own approach to music.

Second City and film work

Kaz began his long association with The Second City in the mid-1960s. A 2014 Chicago Sun-Times article dates his appointment as musical director to 1964, while Kaz told Chicago Tribune music critic Howard Reich in 2009 that Paul Sills had first approached him in 1959 but that he was not available to take the piano job until 1965. Kaz remained with Second City for 24 years, retiring in 1989.

Seated at a piano beside the stage, he accompanied both written sketches and improvised scenes, responding to the actors and the audience while helping control mood and tempo. Reich wrote that Second City's ensemble approach to improvisation drew on principles associated with jazz and described Kaz as the musician who had done the most to foster that approach at the theater. Kaz described an improvised performance as a “skeletal structure” that performers filled out through talent and awareness, with the audience's reactions also shaping what happened onstage. Michael Loring wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times that actors regarded Kaz's judgment as comparable in importance to that of directors Bernard Sahlins and Del Close. Kaz described his role as knowing when music should support the action and when its absence would be more effective.

In Improv Nation, author Sam Wasson described Kaz as a powerful presence whose musical choices could redirect an improviser, using his interplay with Bill Murray as an example. Improviser Ann Ryerson recalled that Kaz's accompaniment kept the performers “afloat” by communicating with them through music. A 1988 Chicago Tribune profile characterized Kaz as the “musical glue” that held Second City together. A 1999 Daily Herald retrospective marking Second City's 40th anniversary likewise presented Kaz as a fixture of the theater's established format, describing its sketches as accompanied by his piano and recalling him as a venerable, aging beatnik. In his 2014 Tribune obituary of Kaz, theater critic Chris Jones described him as becoming as crucial to Second City performances as a cast member and reported that his tenure was the longest of any performer in the theater's history.

During his Second City years, Kaz composed the music for the company's 1969 film The Monitors, in which he also appeared, and scored the 1971 black comedy Little Murders, directed by Alan Arkin. In 1986, he appeared as a jazz pianist in the Cinemax comedy special Jim Belushi – Birthday Boy. Reviewing the program for The New York Times, Stephen Holden described Kaz's character as the only sympathetic person encountered by Belushi's traveling salesman, with the two matching popular songs to literary themes in an otherwise empty hotel dining room.

Later career and death

Kaz retired from Second City in 1989 and moved to Southern California. In 1990 he became musical director of the Upfront Comedy Showcase in Santa Monica, founded by Second City veterans Jane Morris and Jeff Michalski. In a 1994 Los Angeles Times feature, Kaz said that working at Upfront had renewed his enthusiasm for improvisational performance. That year, he also appeared as Noah in the mock documentary ...And God Spoke. In 1999, Kaz was listed for the Masters Panel at the fourth Big Stinkin' International Improv & Sketch Comedy Festival in Austin, alongside Charna Halpern, Gary Austin, Carlo Mazzone-Clementi and Dan O'Connor. In 2005, the Los Angeles Improv Comedy Festival selected him to receive its Del Close Advancement of Improv Award.

Kaz died of lung cancer on March 12, 2014, aboard his boat in San Pedro, where he had lived in retirement. He was 80. The Second City announced a memorial celebration for him in Chicago the following September.

Discography

• Eastern Exposure (Atlantic, 1960)

Film scores

• The Monitors (1969)
• Little Murders (1971)