AW: Do you find yourself going through periods where you practice a lot, and then none at all?

WD: Well, I've told a lot of conflicting stories at one time or another, sometimes for student's benefit. I did do a lot a lot of practicing at one time, and now I just ...because you get up in the morning doesn't mean you have to eat breakfast between 10 and 11, and supper at 5. If you're not hungry you don't eat. If I don't really feel the need myself to practice, then I don't. It depends also on why you want to practice. Am I practicing just to practice, or am I learning a song? I may have heard an arrangement of a song, I've got it in my head, and now I have to teach it to my fingers.

AW: These days you are more prone to working on an arrangement?

WD: Yeah, more of an arrangement. or a song where I hear something different, and so what I do is I explore it in various keys, and different tempos, and then I let it sit for a while. Sometimes I'm bold and daring, and the bass player knows it, and I say, "Do you know this song? Let's just try it in this key." I might get from him some kind of subconscious musical input. Then I go back and try it by myself again, until I get it where I like it.

When I feel the need to practice, then I practice, sometimes to the point of getting out the Hanon and Czerny, all the exercises.

AW: Have you ever had periods where you didn't want to play music?

WD: Oh yeah, sure, not because there wasn't any work, not because I was too busy. I call it "going to the museum, " you know where they have benches so you can sit and look at the pictures across the room. You can't look at the picture unless you stop and sit down. When I was young I used to argue with guys about that, but that's just the way I am. Oscar used to take summers off, go up to Muskoka Lodge, and he didn't play piano up there. He'd sit and watch the grass grow. I'm the same way; for me it's healthy.

AW: What do you think about what's going on now, in the music, in education?

WD: Well, I have a lot of sympathy for the younger players coming up, because now there are fewer places to play, and I've always felt playing and jamming really helped me get my chops together. And in between that, came my opportunities to work with the big boys. For me it was kind of like playing Russian Roulette; I had to do it or else somone else was going to pull the trigger. You really learn fast; you learn on the job. He runs it down tonight; tomorrow he's really on top of you. So that doesn't happen very much anymore. Some players have suffered because they have played too much electric piano. When I was going to music school I wanted to play the organ; I did it for three months and then found out why it wasn't a great idea. You come back to the piano, you just can't play it. There's a delay and different action. I see nothing wrong with them playing the new thing or avant-garde, whatever. They lack Bird and Diz. I don't go out of my way to find it because it doesn't appeal to me. When I was a kid at the circus, I used to be on the edge of my seat thinking, "Don't fall," as I watched the trapeze artists. Now I don't go out of my way to see them falling. I'm wondering, "does he really know what he's doing? Or did somebody kick the door open?" Is it really experimental? I've tried to play more "outside;" I can do it for a couple of choruses, but then I fade; it really isn't me. I can paint your place, but don't ask me to create a mural. It makes me uncomfortable; having been classically trained and having grown up in a house where there was a lot of classical music and opera and religious music, and listening on the radio in those days to Jimmie Lunceford, Lionel Hampton and John Kirby; that was a learning lesson.

It was organized, and even as loosely as we play, we start in a place and we know it's going to go somewhere and there'll be a few stops on the way. How we get there is really up to us.

AW: The last time I saw you play at L'Exterieur, I was struck by how you would play out of tempo intros where you would explore all kinds of chords and nuances. It was almost like Chopin; then you would bring in the rest of the band and be really swinging hard. I was struck by the contrast, still very musical, but it seemed that you were also being incredibly contemplative.

WD: I've been doing that for quite some time, but I couldn't always do it. When I worked at Biddles, I couldn't really get into that because of the kind of place it was. John Q. Public doesn't really know what you and I know, and if I'm getting bored, what about him? I was doing it not entirely selfishly, trying to start something and seeing where it would take me. Why not? If you can do it once then you can do it again. If you fall, you turn it into something else. It's not like there are no wrong notes, but make the wrong notes sound right. Make the chord bend, switch to something. I try to keep my interest and the guys that play with me. Or I can play with(bassist) Brian(Hurley) for example; he'll play me some notes, I say "play in time but don't tap your foot." Give me a pulse, but a very lazy pulse. It's classical really, more suggested than implied. You can almost dance to it, but it's very subtle, flows one note into the other. It's the long phrase, and then to play Chopin like; sometimes it can be fifteen notes, and sometimes it can be nine. You stretch the nine so it takes as much time as the fifteen, but it doesn't really go as fast as the fifteen. Sometimes the fifteen notes don't come in that one bar, they come in two bars. But then the next pulse is not played, it's thought of or felt, so there's a dip. It's my way of experimenting. It's not to make jazz classical; I certainly wouldn't want to be put in a pigeonhole like the MJQ, "chamber jazz."

AW: In a way, it's still your early classical influence coming through...

WD: Oh yeah, it's like I'm going back to my original roots.

AW: Do you ever play classical music for your own pleasure?

WD: Oh yeah, definitely. Even at Concordia, I got a hold of a couple of violin students, and played some Cesar Franck, Beethoven. It's music, I play music. Lots of guys wear two hats.