Hook's Hornpipe

Nikki Iles is a British jazz pianist, composer and educator (RAM, Royal Academy of Music) whose teaching pieces marry her jazz-harmonic ear with the rigours of Classical pedagogy. Piano Tales for Peter Pan (Faber Music) is a story-cycle: each piece a character from J.M. Barrie's novel. Hook's Hornpipe gives Captain Hook a brisk, faintly menacing dance.

Technically the piece tests rhythmic precision in dance idiom and the kind of two-hand independence that early-jazz teaching pieces demand. The right hand carries a syncopated hornpipe line in D minor with chromatic colour notes; the left hand provides a marching bass pattern that walks across the bar. The articulation is mostly light staccato with a few held tenutos for emphasis.

Two pitfalls. First, students smooth the syncopation in pursuit of speed — the hornpipe character goes flat. Train each phrase slowly until the syncopation feels right, then bring it to tempo. Second, the chromatic colour notes are often pointed at; they should feel inevitable, not announced.

Listening: PD reference points are scarce for living composers; for the hornpipe idiom, listen to PD recordings of Henry Purcell hornpipes and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore dance numbers (Musopen) — they calibrate the British nautical-dance feel that Iles is referencing.