Print When Bob Dylan needed a genre-leaping keyboard great to provide supple instrumental accompaniment for his belated 2016 Nobel Prize acceptance speech-cum-lecture, the best person was close at hand. Alan Pasqua, who in 2009 was named the Chair of the Jazz Studies Department at USC’s Thornton School of Music, had toured and recorded with Dylan in the late 1970s. The two live about 20 miles from each other in Los Angeles. “I did not know the text for Bob’s speech, but I knew what it was for and was asked to record about 30 minutes of music, piano musings, nothing too specific. Luckily, I was free that day!” Pasqua recalled. More recently, he performed on “Murder Most Foul,” the nearly 17-minute epic from “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” Dylan’s masterful 2020 album.