About
Haldane graduate bringing quartet to St. Mary's
Robert Freimark is best known for two things: his complicated jazz piano compositions and his hair, which is so long and straight that it serves as curtains over his face when he plays. The look resembles that of Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman.
"Someone told me that recently, but I had no idea who he is," says Freimark, 18, a 2025 Haldane High School graduate who is studying music at William Patterson University in New Jersey. "It makes me more recognizable."
On Saturday (May 9), Freimark will perform in Cold Spring as part of the Music at St. Mary's series with his quartet: Carter Stein on saxophone, Maria Kolesnik on drums and Gabriel Balado on bass (stepping in for Marcelo Díaz).
Earlier this year, Freimark won a Young-Arts National Competition Award in jazz, one of 741 musicians selected from some 13,000 applicants. His goal is to make a living as a professional musician.
He started playing piano at age 7, taking lessons in classical repertoire, but shifted to jazz when his teacher, Jesse Stecken at Forte Piano Studio in Beacon, encouraged him to improvise. A turning point, Freimark says, is when he nailed a solo arrangement of "Rhapsody in Blue" during his sophomore year at Haldane.
Conversant with standard and more obscure repertoire, his style is subtle but sophisticated. His goal is to reel off any of hundreds of instrumental jams on the fly.
"That's what being a jazz musician is, and I'm going through acute ear identification training," he says. "Another skill is listening and being able to identify chord changes on the spot, even if you don't know the song — 'ear-balling it,' as some people say."
Freimark arranged a version of "My Favorite Things," adapting John Coltrane's sax rendition for piano, changing the time signature and delivering a straightforward groove. He can replicate and build on the style of odd-bird Thelonius Monk, whose wobbly, off-kilter phrasing shook up jazz in the 1950s and '60s.
"Just You Wait," an original Freimark composition, which sounds like it's dredged from the classic Monk era, opens with a bebop-influenced passage in which the bass, played by Stecken on keyboard in a video shot at the Howland Cultural Center, doubles the piano's left hand through a few bars of Freimark's solo, then shifts into swinging, walking phrases to provide a launch pad for the pianist to modulate the timing and make other low-key modifications.
"A bunch of notes came to me so fast; I figured I should write them down immediately," Freimark says. "From that draft, not much has changed. There are abstractions, but it still feels grounded."
Reflecting the influence of his mother, Sandy McKelvey, a guitarist who is passionate about the music of Central and South America, Freimark also explores Latin Jazz, executing his feathery touch to "Soñando con Puerto Rico."
On Saturday, he and his bandmates will perform an extended version of "Just You Wait," along with a mix of "songbook standards and compositions that are important to jazz musicians," he says.
Though he began playing at a young age, Freimark never considered himself a prodigy. "There were always kids half my age who could play more difficult music," he says. "I'm just trying to do my own thing."
St. Mary's Church is located at 1 Chestnut St. in Cold Spring. The concert, which begins at 2 p.m., is free, but donations for Music at St. Mary's are welcome.
Robert Freimark is best known for two things: his complicated jazz piano compositions and his hair, which is so long and straight that it serves as curtains over his face when he plays. The look resembles that of Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman.
"Someone told me that recently, but I had no idea who he is," says Freimark, 18, a 2025 Haldane High School graduate who is studying music at William Patterson University in New Jersey. "It makes me more recognizable."
On Saturday (May 9), Freimark will perform in Cold Spring as part of the Music at St. Mary's series with his quartet: Carter Stein on saxophone, Maria Kolesnik on drums and Gabriel Balado on bass (stepping in for Marcelo Díaz).
Earlier this year, Freimark won a Young-Arts National Competition Award in jazz, one of 741 musicians selected from some 13,000 applicants. His goal is to make a living as a professional musician.
He started playing piano at age 7, taking lessons in classical repertoire, but shifted to jazz when his teacher, Jesse Stecken at Forte Piano Studio in Beacon, encouraged him to improvise. A turning point, Freimark says, is when he nailed a solo arrangement of "Rhapsody in Blue" during his sophomore year at Haldane.
Conversant with standard and more obscure repertoire, his style is subtle but sophisticated. His goal is to reel off any of hundreds of instrumental jams on the fly.
"That's what being a jazz musician is, and I'm going through acute ear identification training," he says. "Another skill is listening and being able to identify chord changes on the spot, even if you don't know the song — 'ear-balling it,' as some people say."
Freimark arranged a version of "My Favorite Things," adapting John Coltrane's sax rendition for piano, changing the time signature and delivering a straightforward groove. He can replicate and build on the style of odd-bird Thelonius Monk, whose wobbly, off-kilter phrasing shook up jazz in the 1950s and '60s.
"Just You Wait," an original Freimark composition, which sounds like it's dredged from the classic Monk era, opens with a bebop-influenced passage in which the bass, played by Stecken on keyboard in a video shot at the Howland Cultural Center, doubles the piano's left hand through a few bars of Freimark's solo, then shifts into swinging, walking phrases to provide a launch pad for the pianist to modulate the timing and make other low-key modifications.
"A bunch of notes came to me so fast; I figured I should write them down immediately," Freimark says. "From that draft, not much has changed. There are abstractions, but it still feels grounded."
Reflecting the influence of his mother, Sandy McKelvey, a guitarist who is passionate about the music of Central and South America, Freimark also explores Latin Jazz, executing his feathery touch to "Soñando con Puerto Rico."
On Saturday, he and his bandmates will perform an extended version of "Just You Wait," along with a mix of "songbook standards and compositions that are important to jazz musicians," he says.
Though he began playing at a young age, Freimark never considered himself a prodigy. "There were always kids half my age who could play more difficult music," he says. "I'm just trying to do my own thing."
St. Mary's Church is located at 1 Chestnut St. in Cold Spring. The concert, which begins at 2 p.m., is free, but donations for Music at St. Mary's are welcome.