All that jazz

Lidral Duo: married to their music

Posted on Jan. 26, 2009, at 12:00 a.m.

Video: The Lidral Duo

There’s a nook in Memorial Union called the Jazz Corner – the Lidral Duo have a thing or two to do with that. The husband and wife combo play in the lounge at Union Central, Karel Lidral on saxophone and Terry Lidral on piano. For 21 years the two have played together in musical groups of various incarnations, existing mainly as a duo, but sometimes adding their son on percussion.

The Lidral Duo was formed to provide Terry and Karel a chance to experience a consistently high level of playing.

“People may be offended by this, but Plymouth State College isn’t exactly the cultural center of the universe,” Karel said. “I wanted to play, to be a mainstream jazz musician for quite a few years, and at the University of Illinois, which is where I went to school, there was a wonderful, wonderful jazz scene – a lot of great players there, folks who never really outgrew graduate school and just sort of stayed there for whatever reason, but it was a wonderful scene.”

Karel grew accustomed to the level of playing he experienced at the University of Illinois and later as a professional musician in New York, so in 1988 he began arranging jazz standards and composing some originals.

Terry learned how to play piano, and the Lidral Duo was born. They played their first gig in a John Deere showroom in Moline, Ill., and from then on played gallery openings, parties and concerts.

The Lidrals met at the University of Vermont Summer High School Music Session. Both were students at the time – Karel later served as a counselor and faculty member at the camp. Terry grew up in a small town in Vermont called Eden and attended the University of Vermont before transferring to the University of Illinois to be with Karel.

They seem most fond of their time as the house band for the local talk show, “The Nite Show.” The show starred Danny Cashman, now assistant press secretary for Gov. Baldacci. Cashman started the show when he was a communications major at UMaine, initially producing it for the local WB affiliate. It was a half-hour show, generally with a guest, a musical act and various skits. The shows were planned out but not rehearsed – generally the crew would get together a half hour before taping to review the run sheet, at which point the Lidrals would pick the musical material.

The Lidrals “were always very willing to do some of the . comedic stuff,” according to Cashman, but they brought “legitimacy and class” to the show. Cashman felt that any good late night show must have a band, and that the Lidrals were “the best we could have gotten in Maine.”

“Everything’s funnier when you have a musical punch added to it. They really got it,” Cashman said. “Sometimes they’d be featured guests because we felt so lucky to have them.”

The Lidrals saw the show as a unique challenge. “That was an interesting experience because it was taped, but it was done spontaneously. Very demanding, but a lot of fun,” Terry said. The show was generally taped in front of a small live audience – friends of the guests and bands.

“We didn’t stop during the taping unless it completely crashed and burned, which occasionally it did,” Karel explained. “If you’re into W.C. Fields or folks like that there’s a very strong spontaneous sense to some of the things that seem to have gone on in those films and we definitely related to that.”

Karel came to UMaine in hopes of developing more hands-on relationships with students. “I was losing touch, I felt, with the general music major population – I wanted to have a little more impact.” At the university he teaches music theory, so every music major must take one of his classes, “whether they like it or not.”

In addition, Karel has been active in promoting jazz music on campus. For several years he was the director of the University of Maine jazz ensemble, and during that time he created a jazz minor. The minor is, as far as he knows, the only of its kind in the country and is open to all students. In an effort to increase accessibility, he also created the chamber jazz ensemble.

Despite fielding lucrative job offers from prestigious universities, the Lidrals have chosen to stay in Maine to continue Karel’s work with the jazz program.

The Lidrals originally started to play in the union as part of the TGIF series. As funding dried up, they continued to volunteer and played wherever there was space – sometimes in the Bangor Room, sometimes in the Bear’s Den. This semester a piano has been moved into the lounge next to Starbucks, and the Lidrals plan to perform there every Monday evening.

“We try to make the music accessible to everyone,” said Karel.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009, 12:00 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.