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Playing The North Olympic Landscape On The Piano

Geoffrey Redick
The Steinway baby grand piano at Maier Hall, Peninsula College

 

 

David Jones is the head of the music department at Peninsula College. He loves all types of music. He hears how different styles and formats influence one another, thrilling with the commonalities between classical and jazz, playing pop into fuller melodies.

 

This love is lifelong. He says he remembers being a young child, reaching up to the piano keys to plunk them.

Jones began to be drawn to composition when he was in high school, and he studied it at the New England Conservatory and Indiana University. He’s written hundreds of pieces, and they’ve been performed and recorded all over the world by soloists, small ensembles and orchestras.

Jones says his interest in jazz informs his teaching methods. He improvises, follows the discussions of student interest, pointing out connections. He wants students who aren’t music majors to learn about forms they’ve never encountered before. With his music students, Jones gives space to play, to reset, to begin again, stretching out of natural tendencies.

Jones grew up in Seattle. Although there are aspects of big-city life he misses, he says the natural world in Port Angeles is a limitless muse.