In the jazz bubble everybody is a “face” and a “huge talent” and we all know one or two – or maybe a whole lot more – fairly arcane and largely surplus to requirement details a nosebleed away from being just that bit too nerdy about aspects of the genre.
But to the outside world it’s more a case of nada in the knowledge department, a tabula rasa if you’re being generous, and even the most famous “faces” and “talents” could all go striding down the street with a big sign above their heads and still receive a big shrug of non-recognition.
So in the spirit of nudging things along without going in too deep here’s a look ahead to the only specialist jazz piano trio festival anywhere this summer, and thankfully it happens to be at one of the global homes of jazz, Ronnie Scott’s.
First up and prepare for some bold type: why does a piano trio festival excite so much? Well, love them or loathe them piano trios – piano, double bass and drums – are the dominant format in acoustic jazz and have been in modern times and particularly on the European scene since at least the emergence of EST in the 1990s. Sadly that particular story ended in 2008 with the death of Esbjörn Svensson. But since then there have been dozens of bands to respond to their music often to highly stimulating effect... new Blue Note signing GoGo Penguin just the latest.
Older jazz fans and standards fiends will be mourning the demise of the Keith Jarrett Standards trio that recently have hung up their boots some 20 albums down the line, Somewhere, recorded in the beautiful KKL concert hall in Lucerne, the most recent released two years ago. Who knows, apart from the label, what’s in the vaults however. In all likelihood it’s a shedful of live recordings. But time will tell. The Standards trio had been around since the 1980s and you could argue that they kept the art of the standards trio alive in classic guise that ended up spurring on new generation players like Brad Mehldau who then made a series of acclaimed Art of the Trio recordings himself. Jarrett, as the most influential jazz pianist on the planet alongside Herbie Hancock (who hasn’t dabbled in a piano trio in years) and Chick Corea (who has, check the awesome Trilogy) leaves a giant footprint on the whole mini-genre. But you can trace the format back a long time to say Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly and Ahmad Jamal.
Jamal’s mantle has been carried on to an extent by Robert Glasper who is appearing at Piano Trio Fest as main headliner. The second running of this themed festival on Frith Street (which has taken the place on the calendar of the fondly remembered BritJazz fest) handily enough, and in the spirit of an imaginary nme.com piece Piano Trios In Order of Greatness is placed at the top of the current Marlbank list for the year to date just on the strength of his version of ‘Reckoner’, easily the best of many Radiohead covers in existence at least since Brad Mehldau did ‘Exit Music for a Film’ back in the late-1990s.
Mehldau incidentally not at PianoTrioFest or at Ronnie’s much over the years is another of the giants of piano trio these days although his trio is taking on Thomas Pynchon proportions (becoming a tiny bit reclusive) as Mehldau grapples with a number of other projects including premiering ‘Three Pieces for Piano After Bach’ at Carnegie Hall in the autumn. Anyway, that 2015 Piano Trios In Order of Greatness list in terms of album output runs like this after Glasper in numero uno spot, Vijay Iyer trio with Break Stuff at 2, oddly a trio that has never played Ronnie’s; at 3 the beautiful Giovanni Guidi trio with This is the Day (the auteur’s choice, no less); at 4 Aaron Goldberg’s The Now released on US jazz indie Sunnyside; and stopping the list for the sake of not wishing to risk healthy levels of sanity at 5 Justin Kauflin’s Dedication, Kauflin a recent visitor to Ronnie’s.
As for Glasper who plays the fest over three nights, getting in might be a huge problem so check for tickets before it’s too late, on Covered he has reunited his trio after doing a lot of R&B with singers and his other band the Experiment. So with him are Vicente Archer on double bass and Damion Reid, drums, the same players who made Canvas and In My Element with him and where his incredibly successful eventually Grammy-winning time serving up jazz piping hot and full of recognisable flavour to a new generation of hip-hop and R&B fans on Blue Note began.
As well as the beautifully gathered version of Radiohead tune ‘Reckoner’ from the 2007 In Rainbows on the album you’ll find an absorbing ‘Barangrill’, an unusual choice from Joni Mitchell’s massive catalogue of songs dating back to 1972’s For The Roses with Glasper at his most Herbie Hancock-like; and, later, ‘Levels’ from Glasper’s long time friend and associate Bilal that has a brooding mournful quality to it. The album’s serious side develops significantly with ‘Got Over’ featuring the deep voice of Harry Belafonte in a personal statement about black experience and survival.
Glasper with this record continues to be one of the crucial jazz pianists who are making a difference to the art form as well as reflecting the tradition of the jazz piano trio in transition. Check the club’s website below for the full line-up of what promises to be a feast of send-a-postcard-home jazz and an introduction for many of us to some exciting new names including Vein, Elliot Galvin, the Gerald Clayton trio, and the exciting natural talent of the fast emerging Sarah Tandy playing a late spot with her trio.
The festival – Glasper trio pictured above – begins on 10 August and runs for six evenings featuring double bills each night. For tickets and further details click here