ALEX BUGNON'S SOUL PURPOSE

Alex Bugnon's melodic sense and compositional gifts have touched the lives of many as was evident to me when I got to catch a performance of his group on a jazz cruise around Manhattan island. It was precisely the kind of starry, summer moonlit night for which Alex's music is a perfect score. He was out performing songs from his seventh record as a leader - the second and latest Narada Jazz release, Soul Purpose. He also played many of the hits he's had as a solo artist over a productive and successful career launched back in 1989, with his debut release, Love Season -- voted "Best Jazz Album" of 1990 by Black Radio Exclusive and also reaching #2 on the R&B charts. He has received two Soul Train awards and has built an enduring fan base, which, that night were rocking the boat dancing in the isles and singing along with his infectious melodies.

I was raised in Montreux, Switzerland, where I started playing the piano when I was six years old. But I didn't practice at all. My father had to chase me around the house to get me to practice. He was trained in the conservatory for voice, and had the opportunity to sing with the Siena Opera, in Italy, during his early twenty's -- which he turned down after his own father, my grandfather, threatened to disown him. My dad later became a jazz guitarist and played in a swing orchestra. I studied in the conservatory in Paris for two years, but I loved American funk and jazz music. I learned, though, that if you play jazz, you are not taken seriously in Europe as a European musician. So I came to America and studied at Berklee, in Boston. I played a lot with a gospel group [Clara Mahomes and the Gospel Leviticus] while I was in Boston, living in Winnebagos, touring the South. This prepared me for New York City, where I spent my first four years here backing up R&B performers like Najee, Freddie Jackson, Keith Sweat, Patti Austin and James Ingram. I've been writing, recording and producing ever since, but I still consider the most important part of my musical education to be figuring out every Earth, Wind & Fire tune. This also helped my love life, a lot (laughs)!

Every piece of music has a different approach, but I always start at the piano. I play -- I just play anything. I might go through a whole bunch of songs. It's kind of like the same process you might go through if you wanted to learn to play jazz. First you play in the style of somebody you want to emulate and then you evolve on your own, hopefully…(laughs). Sometimes I might start by playing somebody else's song -- anything that comes to mind -- and that often leads me off onto something else.

No. I stop myself when I find something interesting. Once I discover a melodic direction worth developing, then I might sequence a little beat, let it loop, and see what comes up -- working my new melody with some chord changes. But it always starts with at least the skeletal fragment of a melody.

I practice a lot. And if I find myself getting into a rut with practicing when I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere -- you know, daydreaming -- just playing scales, I'll practice some classical music. A Beethoven Piano Sonata will usually get me back on track. But when I practice, I find my mind is shot for writing. So, I practice on a practice day and write on a writing day.

Listen to guys like Stevie Wonder. He's the ultimate! Listen, analyze and grab the concepts. There is no better example of somebody who can write such a well-constructed -- sometimes difficult to play, but never difficult to remember -- melody. Always interesting for a musician and easy enough for anyone to sing along with. When Stevie becomes your standard, that elevates you and you strive for better things. On top of that, being a piano player, I don't have the luxury to hold notes like a saxophone player. Rather than writing a melody with less notes and sustaining them, I have to play more notes -- without clouding the listener's head, so they can still sing along.

When I work with collaborators for my records, I always finish something that someone has given me. It's never the other way around. Collaboration, for me, is a little spark that gets me going. I have a friend who sends me a CD every six months with about fifty little ideas -- sometimes it's just four bars to grab my attention -- and my imagination. We write whole tunes together in this way. But I never use the melody. It's usually just a mood or something else.

For a vocal song I'll write the initial idea: the groove, the chord changes, the melody, the bridge -- of course today's R&B songs have no bridges anymore (laughs) -- and then let somebody who's really into the flavor of the day finish. Somebody like Alicia Keys -- who' very talented and a breath of fresh air -- it would be a pleasure to work with her.

I believe in the old cliché: "build it and they will come." I can't help it if it doesn't conform to a radio industry consultant's model of what belongs on the air. I need to be true to my own instincts, and since people are still buying my records, I'm not going to change the way I write!