Photo courtesy of Kyle Walker

By Steve Sears

Pompton Lakes resident and pianist, Kyle Walker, describes a piano.

“The thing about the piano that I really like is that it can adapt very easily to all genres,” Walker says. “And, really, it can be a full orchestra. It has 88 keys, and it has on average 235 strings inside the piano. Every piano has its own personality. I think every piano really you can make sing. When I play the piano in my house, for example, you can’t hear it all throughout the house, but in the room that it’s in, you certainly feel like you’re sort of immersed in the sound. And it can, in no way, feel like background music, especially when the piano is open. It’s really something you can feel.”

Walker, 31, who received his Masters of Music from New York City’s Mannes School of Music, put his fingers to the keys at a very young age. And although he’s dabbled in various professions and has played other instruments, he is always drawn back. “I love being the one at the piano.”

Walker, originally from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, started studying with Joyce Perry, a local piano teacher in Clemens, North Carolina. “I eventually was admitted into the University of North Carolina School of the Arts for high school,” he says, “which is a high school program that they have which is part of this music conservatory that trains college and graduate students. It was amazing because I was immersed with people that were way more talented than me, that were way better than me, and were just playing miles ahead of me.” However, it was all beneficial. “I definitely knew that I had my work cut out for me, and that was really important. That was really crucial for me, to at least be exposed to that sort of level.” After that, Walker headed to East Carolina University to study both music (his teacher was Henry Doskey), and broadcast journalism. For the latter, he had internships with a local television station, while he also studied music at the University of North School of the Arts with Clifton Matthews. “He’s had a lot of students that have gone on to do big things,” Walker says of Matthews. “He was really, really, really important for me, and I didn’t realize it so much at the time.”

Walker eventually hired a new piano teacher, Benjamin Hochman, and this led him up the east coast. “He’s really who I guess put me on more of a trajectory to think about this seriously as a professional. He exposed me to some music festivals in New York and things like that, which got me interested in the whole New York scene. I ended up moving to New York and going to grad school at Mannes College (which is the New School for Music) under Thomas Sauer. He was wonderful. He really put my thought process of technique on a whole new level.”

Walker a few years back founded an organization called “The Dream Unfinished” towards the end of his grad school years. “The point of art, the point of artists – living artists – is to talk about issues and bring awareness to things that people might have a hard time actually talking about,” Walker says. “The timing was kind of perfect. I kind of already had an idea of what I really wanted to do. I was really aching to get out of school so that I could just like do the real thing. And it was amazing, because, all of a sudden, I was exposed to all of this music from working with all of these other musicians that I hadn’t been exposed to before. Some of the composers I’m playing a lot now are Margaret Bonds, Florence Price, and Le Chevalier De Saint-Georges (The Black Mozart). The way “The Dream Unfinished” works is it’s really a collective of artists and musicians. The way that we function is that every concert has sort of a different setup, sometimes a different orchestra. Other times it might just be a piano and violin recital, or it might be a vocalist, or it might be a string quartet. Every setup for our concerts is different and that’s partially because every venue we play in is different.”

Walker, who now teaches at the Kaufmann Music Center in Manhattan and is working on two album projects, is married to violinist Katherine Dennis, and they are proud parents of Khloe, who will soon be two-years-old. He and his wife often perform together, and even practice melodiously as a duo at home. “I think it’s a dynamic thing,” Walker says of performing. “That’s part of the fun about it, it’s not always the same feeling. Sometimes it’s peace, and I would say by default, whenever I’m about to step onto the stage – and I think it’s when I’m playing with Katherine or with anybody else, or as well just by myself – my first feeling is I hope I can bring peace to somebody’s day. And then I can take them out of the world that they’ve been living in today or yesterday or this week, and just help them sort of be in the moment.”

More information about Kyle Walker, his music, and upcoming projects, can be found on his website, www.kylewalkerpiano.com.