Curious Child

Karl Browne can remember it as if it were yesterday. He would sit, as a "nosy" little boy, on the steps in his house and listen to his father, the legendary Al Browne, give piano lessons to his students. The students would bang on the keys at first, creating sounds that could be best described as noise rather than song. Before Karl knew it, his father's students were playing more coherently by the end of the lessons the very same day. By the next week, it was as if they'd been playing their respective songs for years. Karl always knew he could do that, play like he's been playing for years, even when he was eight.

"After learning the notes and playing those little easy songs," Karl says, "that was the first real song I played."

That song was Duke Ellington's "A" train, which Karl said he played at eight years of age. He hasn't looked back since.

"It was full steam ahead," said Karl, " I put a lot of hours into it."

Karl began practicing the piano with religious fervor. Putting in nine or ten hours at the piano was nothing to him. He'd practice in the morning, waking up at 4:00 AM when he didn't have to be in school until 7:30 AM. He'd practice as soon as he came in after school. And his weekends were spent perched in front of the keyboard as if Krazy Glue were on the stool.

Sometimes his father would lift him out of bed and take him to the black keyboard stool long before the sun came up. Karl said he never minded it and who would? By the time Karl was 11, his ear was so fine tuned that he could play whatever a person hummed in front of him note for note and in the exact same key.

"My father was giving me ear training," said Karl, the father of two sons. "He would just wake me up, and drag me to the piano while I was sleeping. Then he would start hitting notes and chords and he wanted me to memorize them. Along with God’s given blessings, that’s what kept my ear alive."

A few years later, Karl found himself auditioning for Erasmus Hall High School's Jazz Band – as a freshman. Freshmen were never allowed to join the band. A musician had to have a great mix of discipline and creativity that usually comes with experience to join a band with a reputation around the tri-state area. Karl Browne however, would not be denied.

"I passed it with flying colors," he said."The Jazz Band meant another home away from home. It was like my Boy's Club. It was my room to express myself."

All those years of training and practicing were paying off. The band won numerous awards around the tri-state area with Karl leading the rhythm section on his piano. They won the Yamaha Jazz Festival four years in a row with Karl winning solo awards all those years. They were All-City Jazz musicians. They won the New York State Ensemble Competition and competitions at Five Towns College. They had all that going for them and they had Spring Concerts at Brooklyn College, which practically the entire school attended.

"You had to be there," Karl said. "You just had to."

After high school, Karl began to play professionally domestically and around the world. He played with legends like Roberta Flack, The Blue Notes, Freddie Jackson, El Debarge, Johnny Kemp, Aretha Franklin and more. His name is well-known in Jazz music circles and music circles period.

Today Karl has his own group called Smooth Improvisation, and he's producing R&B groups as well as Jazz groups. He's preparing to take the world by storm with his own Jazz album before he produces an album for Gospel, Jazz, and R&B. Can you name one person who has done that in recent years?

"I feel I can do it because of all the hard work and all the hard training," he said. "I just want people to say Karl Browne can do everything!"

So for this young man -- who remembers turning the radio on at night, only to play the songs that he heard in his sleep - life is a series of revelations. His curiosity is peaked when he hears a new sound, especially from his own keyboard.

Challenges excite him; new music elates him. With his love of music, he'll never tire of trying to give other music lovers some of the joy he found just by being nosy.

"I'll be a student until I die," he said. "You'll always be a student of something that you like."

Along the way between high school and the launch of his professional career, Karl's father Al passed away. Karl plays for himself and for his father now, and commits himself to respecting his father in everything he does. Perhaps it's Karl's way of bringing his father back and keeping him here, as he remembers it as if it were yesterday -- being that nosy little kid sitting at the keyboard with his dad.