A virtuoso can be defined as someone who possesses unusually outstanding – and often innate – technical ability in the fine arts of singing or playing a musical instrument.
An example of such an individual can now be heard playing piano each week in Houston, as life circumstances have placed Darin Bradford at the ivory of the community’s United Methodist Church.
Thanks to hours upon hours of practice every day for decades, his execution could only be called masterful.
But it could also be said that Bradford is working with an advantage most piano players don’t have at their disposal. To him, it’s simply natural.
“I started when I was four,” he said, “and it’s something that I always had an ability to do. My aunt showed me some tunes, and I just started playing them. I started formal lessons when I was five.”
Bradford, 41, grew up in Willow Springs and graduated from high school there. Piano isn’t the only instrument he has excelled with; he also played trumpet for years, and even began college with a double music major at what was then Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield.
But Bradford’s musical fate was to be seated at piano bench, and that eventually took precedence and became his focus.
Soon after earning a degree in piano performance, Bradford began his entertaining career with a job in Branson in the mid-1990s. Wishing to expand his horizons, he moved to Las Vegas in 1997 and ended up performing at several big-name venues, as well as entertaining at large trade shows annually hosted by the Nevada city.
In addition to being a talented musician, Bradford is also highly accomplished in several martial arts disciplines and was inducted into the California Martial Arts Hall of Fame in 2009. While in Vegas, he found several ways to utilize his prowess in that area, working between music gigs as a stunt man in the Treasure Island pirate show and as a sword fighter at the Excaliber, and even running a martial arts school for a while.
“That was a lot of fun,” he said.
His experience in Vegas also included “character work,” and he spent a time acting as everything from a jester at Harrah’s, to a centurian at Caesar’s Palace, and an Egyptian Pharaoh at the Luxor.
“For a long time, there were so many ways to find work there,” Bradford said. “But all those jobs have more or less dried up.”
When the economy reduced his opportunities in Las Vegas, Bradford returned to Missouri and for several months operated a martial arts school in Springfield. But personal circumstances recently brought him back toward his old stomping grounds, and he and his three young children now live at his parents’ home in Raymondville.
With an eye on either teaching in higher education or perhaps landing a performing job with a cruise ship line, Bradford is again enrolled at Missouri State, working toward a master’s degree in pedagogy, or the science and art of teaching. To make it all work, he spends a few days each week living with cousins in Springfield in order to attend classes, and then comes back to Texas County to be a father and an integral part of a church worship team.
His goal is to eventually complete his education with a doctoral level degree.
“The music field is so competitive now, you really need the doctoral to have the most options,” Bradford said.
But whatever day of the week it is and whichever part of southern Missouri he’s in, Bradford also practices playing piano. A lot.
“It takes many hours a day to do the material we need to do,” he said. “I maximize my time when I’m at school and still do a lot of work when I’m at home, but when I’m at home, it’s more my kids’ time.”
Having performed for so long and at so many venues, Bradford has played on dozens of different types, styles, and makes of pianos. While they all have certain similarities, they all possess their own unique characteristics, and playing them all well requires some adjusting.
“Each one has a little different touch and a little different resonance,” Bradford said, “so you have to approach them all a little differently.”
There was a time when Bradford insisted on playing only grand pianos, but now he’s not against using an upright.
“I would rather not, but I will,” he said. “When it comes to someone hearing the music or not hearing it, I’ll sometimes sacrifice the level of instrument.”
Bradford began playing piano during Sunday services at Houston UMC after meeting pastor Beth Duckworth last summer. He has since found it to be a calling.
“It’s an outlet for me to do what I was meant to do,” Bradford said. “When I was entertaining, the intention of the people who hired me wasn’t always my intention. Now I feel like I can just play music that I feel speaks to me and will touch other people.”
Duckworth said Bradford’s playing often has a profound effect people in his vicinity.
“There are some days that he is so anointed that there are people in the congregation who just sit and cry,” she said. “It’s because of the power of God that’s flowing through him. That’s why I like to sit on the bench with him – you can feel the Holy Spirit.”
“That’s true,” Bradford said. “I can always tell when the Spirit’s moving, because I feel chills up and down my arms when I’m playing.
“That’s powerful – and it’s not me. It’s God.”
Bradford used to think he had to always play complicated arrangements with a lot of notes. His recent experience has changed his mind.
“I’ve learned that sometimes a single note with a little accompaniment behind it is as effective as playing all those notes,” he said. “Sometimes it’s the simpler or sentimental melodies that God will move through most powerfully.”
Duckworth considers having Bradford in the Houston UMC mix as serving a purpose.
“Music was given to the church as a gift of worship,” she said. “Those tears people have is just worship welling up and pouring out. It often brings tears to my eyes that God would grace us with such a gift.
“There’s nothing we can do about it – we just receive it.”
Sunday (Dec. 16) at 4 p.m., Darin Bradford and vocalist Jia Ling will perform at Houston United Methodist Church. Bradford will likely play for about an hour, followed by about a half hour of singing by Ling, a native of the Beijing, China area who will graduate from MSU in May with a master’s in vocal opera performance.
Included in the program will be a couple of versions of “Ave Maria” and a special arrangement “Oh Holy Night” that features a middle section in which the piano and vocalist alternate. Admission is free, and a reception will follow.
For more information, call 417-967-2372.