Jazz pianist Jamal looks back on 'interesting' life

Award-winning jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal said he didn't choose music as a career.

"Music chose me," Jamal said during a phone interview from his Pittsburgh, Pa. home. "At 3 years old, when I began playing, you don't make conscious choices.

"That was too young for me to even begin to think about what I wanted to do. I just did it," he continued. "It chose me and that's the way it has been ever since."

At 79, Jamal has been looking back at his career and said the thing that kept him going was "an interesting life — one that encompassed many things, especially traveling.

"My life is very interesting and even more interesting than it was during the more stressful years when you're trying to accomplish everything and trying to raise a family and keep men working," he said.

One of those "interesting things" was his recent — and first — trip to Russia.

"They tried to get me to go to Russia for years and years and years," he said. "I finally accepted and enjoyed it immensely. So I composed a composition as a result of going to Moscow. I wrote a composition I like very much, called 'Flight to Russia.'  "

The song is on his CD, "A Quiet Time," which was recently released in the United States (it was released in Europe last year). This new full-length, which features 11 tracks, is not to be confused with the four-track extended play of the same name.

"Going into the studio is always exciting, always challenging and always different," Jamal said. "I don't go into the studio that much. I used aggravate the companies I've been with by not going into the studio. I only go into the studio when I have something to say musically. I don't dare go in otherwise, because that's dangerous and non-productive."

Jamal, whose career has spanned more than seven decades, said the main challenge is to "avoid distraction.

"You have to be sure you remain focused, and that's a challenge for anyone, even for a journalist as well, and a pilot. He can't have distractions," he said.

Still, some of those distractions are the rewards of being in the business. He was given the Kennedy Center's Living Legends Award in 2007 and was named an officer in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government that same year.

"The Living Legends award in Washington was great because I had a lot of my colleagues there who were still living," Jamal said. "We got that before we got our transition (to the other side)."