Monday, August 25,2003 ~my dad was in the newspaper. And although it is not about me, I still wanted to share it with you
because he is my dad.
Pianist Ron Bickel loves the job that has "no pay, little work and not a whole lot of
respect."
Sounds like most jobs, right? But, he says, there's no reason to avoid life as a jazz musician as long as you keep one
thing in mind:
"One of the biggest things I try to teach students is they have to figure out what they're going to do with their lives,"
he says. "Playing jazz piano is fine, but you most often need more than that."
It's getting to be the time of year when he concentrates more on that educational mission. It's when Bickel, 62, starts
passing on that lesson at Duquesne University, Uptown.
He has been performing since he was 15 and plays solo, in a trio and in a big band in this area. But he knows he can't
always be out there trying to rival Keith Jarrett. Sometimes it's necessary to be a calm accompanist for a singer. Or to do
a commercial date. Or play at a party. Or teach.
And that's what he tries to tell his students.
Bickel took an early retirement five years ago from the Highlands School District and put together work as an adjunct faculty
member at Duquesne, at the City Music Center, which also is at the Uptown campus, and privately.
Teaching jazz these days is satisfying, he says. He has students at Duquesne and at the City Music Center who are playing
fabulously at an early age.
But he's seen too many established jazz performers "out there scufflin'" at a ripe age to advise getting too comfortable
with pure talent.
He also watched his son, Doug, 34, try to make a living with the Maynard Ferguson and Arturo Sandoval bands as well as
in three years in the supposedly fertile jazz ground of Europe.
He's now a professor of jazz at the University of New Orleans.
You need those day gigs to pay the bills, Bickel says.
That seems like a good lesson for everyone.
Friday, July 25, 2003
Christina Aguilera gets a bad rap
After reading Gene Collier's column "Christina should stop playing with that skanky hose" (July 6), I felt it only right to respond to it. First off, a point that must be made clearly: It is an undeniable fact
that our hometown diva's voice is beyond the best out there.
I too have to agree that Christina has taken things a little bit above and beyond, but truthfully, people are making too
much of it. Have you ever seen a rapper's video, such as one of Kid Rock's videos, with the many almost-naked strippers dancing
on poles and making suggestive gestures in the background? MTV as well as the public never look twice at it because it is
a guy's video, and that is what is expected from guys. But when Christina goes and puts on a sexier outfit and dances only
half as provocatively as one of those strippers from Kid Rock's videos, the whole world gasps.
Christina, as well as many other female artists, has been working overtime to break the double standard. I guarantee these
sincere acts will last until she makes her point clear. Instead of the world making a bigger deal and increasing the double
standard, we should be accepting of her and what she does.
Honestly, we shouldn't be so focused on what she says, does, or wears; we should be concentrating on the music she is producing
to the world. Have you even listened to her latest album? She bares her soul to the world and gives young girls confidence
to be themselves and not let anything bring them down. She is hoping that with her music we will one day live in a
world with no stereotypes and no double standards.
ELISE ANN JOLENE
PITTSBURGH
Board: Screen should spotlight talent, not ads
By Ellen James
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, June 4, 2003
....Earlier this year, the city school board decided to offer CAPA admission to students
who live outside the city -- if they pass admission auditions and pay the tuition.
Elise Bickel, 16, a junior at Shaler High School, is among 25 non-resident students accepted to CAPA.
The bill would "definitely be a benefit for us. I'm planning to attend Duquesne University, and every penny counts," Bickel
said. She's been studying singing her "whole life" and already has an agent.
Bickel said her family has been in contact with the Shaler Area School District superintendent's office. But even if the
school district doesn't pay her tuition, she said she still will go to the Pittsburgh school.
"I'm pretty sure my parents will pay for it, but I'll just have to work really hard to pay for college," she said.
The new CAPA building is at the corner of Ninth Street and Fort Duquesne Boulevard and has capacity for 600 students. It
will open in the fall.
The city's arts high school now is in Homewood. That building is scheduled to close on June 12.
*to see whole article go to Pittsburgh LIVE.com and search for it!
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