All That Jazz
If I was the mayor of Bloomington, the first person I’d pick for my staff would be a hardcore boogie woogie and blues musician. That’s exactly what 58-year-old Craig Brenner, Special Projects Coordinator for the city’s Community and Family Services department, is.
At D’Angelos Italian Restaurant on the east side of town, he plays solo jazz, blues and boogie woogie piano on the first Thursday of every month. I wanted to find out more about the marvel behind this workaday public servant—a man whose piano playing critics have called “fine and funky” and “a real gem.” What else would you call a special projects coordinator?
The first time I meet Craig Brenner, his nimble fingers massage an electronic keyboard like a rolling pin over dough. Two sky-blue eyes float intensely over the keys and sometimes, on occasion, flick toward the dining tables. But whether focused on the keys or on his audience—boogie woogie and jazz he plays without need for music— it is obvious that Craig Brenner sees merely what he hears. The sounds may well be like stamps inked in his memory. If there is a pianist’s pianist, Brenner would be it.
Seeing me, he looks like I’ve caught him off guard. But his talent is evident — the byproduct of a strong-willed yet wildly unassuming man, a quiet storm of restless determination.
“The hardest thing I’ve played?” he tells me. “The piano. That’s the hardest thing. I’ve been working on a bunch of pieces by James B. Johnson and Fats Waller and those are really hard. You have to play them all the time and I don’t. They’re from the ‘20s and ‘30s, a stride piano style. If you don’t play them very frequently, you lose them. Now I just wing it.” He laughs.
On CD covers and websites he resembles a low-key Rick Moranis, but in person he is of his own kind. Craig Brenner is in his element here, working the crowd of families, singles, colleagues, and fans in his unique way. Tall and wiry, he reaches out to eat his lasagna at arm’s length, plate pushed far ahead. He speaks with a glowing conviviality that emits a sense of accomplishment for what he’s done.
“I had gone to college before and majored in political science,” Brenner tells me later over coffee. A formulaic playlist of drive-time standards like James Taylor and Chicago is clattering in the background. For easy listening songs, they are almost cold.
Brenner’s original goal was to wear the shoes of a schoolteacher—a job, he says, that left him unsatisfied. Teaching later became a stepping stone to his “real” passion at 26. He graduated from IU’s School of Music in 1980 and released his first recording, “Backstage Boogie,” a decade later. The fondness he harbors for New Orleans can be heard in his follow-ups, where congo drummers and nods to the city’s jazz and heritage festival are prominent. So are hints of James Booker and Fats Domino. Craig’s sons, Eli and Nate, appear with him. And his brand new wife, Lori Wallace, plays percussion.
There are alleys to Craig Brenner that many have left untrodden. There is nothing highlighted or punctuated in his demeanor. He isn’t foreboding or melancholy. And this thread of humility is carried into his performing, where Brenner seems to dismiss any credit for his work. When someone claps after a song ends, he stands up and waves as though he wished they didn’t. More waves and a smile. Someone has complimented him. Though a microphone is close by, he stays tight-lipped, neither commenting nor singing as many of the songs he likes do not have lyrics.
Still, Brenner was once voted best musician in Bloomington by the now defunct Bloomington Independent. Music is clearly more than his avocation or even a second career. As he tells it, his “real passion” and “career” are better off distinct.
“It wasn’t like I felt like I was gonna burn anybody on the piano because I was never that good,” says Brenner. “So that’s why my niche isn’t a concert pianist. It’s hearing things that I love.”
Brenner started working for the City in 1986. He says it’s hard to reconcile the day-to-day pressures of work with the enthusiasm and spirituality he gleans from the creative process.
“You can’t do both all the time,” says Brenner. “It comes in waves. I have to stay in my job…so I have to let the music, as far as the creative part, slide until I really feel like something is going to happen. For example, last time I recorded something was in 2001.
“But since then I’ve been writing a lot of music and I wrote a lot of stuff in the wedding, so that was my outlet for nine months or so. Now I’m sort of like ‘what do I do now?’ and I’m waiting. I have a bunch of stuff written, and [Lori] and I are going to record our new album. But we haven’t started yet.”
Though separate from his City position, music for Brenner prevails as a way of life. It arguably allows him to better coordinate life’s “special projects.” Especially the tough ones. Craig grows quiet as he remembers the song he wrote in tribute to his grandmother. “I wrote a song for her called ‘Song for Grandma,’ and it was because of her influence on me as a youngster,” he says. “After she died, I recorded an instrumental and a vocal version.”
Somewhere, through all the clatter and chatter, is a fortress of songs that cuts through the noise. And to D’Angelos customers on first Thursday evenings, his piano comments on a world that greats like James B. Johnson and Fats Waller would be proud to know isn’t left behind.
Craig packs up to leave and Celine Dion pipes through the ceiling. She strains to be heard, but somehow isn’t.