If you haven’t heard of this piano genius, it’s about time to get on Youtube. There are nights like this in New York, you’re invited to another of these obscure music concerts that fill the pages of Time Out Magazine. You follow your friends not expecting anything. Then, as it is rarely the case, your jaw literally drops. I discovered last Wednesday ELEW. Eric Lewis, 37, from New Jersey played at the White House last year for the Obamas and count Oprah, Sting, Leonardo DiCaprio, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Jackman, Josh Hartnett and Woody Harrelson as fans. Watching him play is like watching an Olympian giving the performance of his life. ELEW sweats buckets during his shows, he’s agressive on the keyboard and his face is distorted with emotion and pain. For him, the bench is a useless accessory. He plays standing, legs apart. He wears knight’s armors on his wrists and glittery sneakers.
ELEW plays his own style of “rock jazz”. “Jazz remains obscure to most people. I adapt it to something they know”, he told me the next day sitting in some Hell’s Kitchen Diner. ELEW plays his own version of Nirvana, Madonna, Michael Jackson or the Rolling Stones’ songs. He describes himself as the Andy Warhol of keyboard. He knocks on the wooden box of the piano, pull and strikes the strings creating new sounds. “I want to make my performance look more difficult”. Using only the piano, he manages to recreate the sound of an electric guitar, vocals and even the bass.
The most surprising detail of my encounter with him? To learn he has no piano at home. How does he practice then? “On my thighs.” Really? “I also have a mini keyboard, some keys are broken and I sleep with it”. ELEW arises as an UFO in the jazz world. “It’s all part of my anti-conformist message to this industry.” No doubt, this man has something to prove.
Pictures and video Marie-Joelle Parent
