Bill Charlap

Biography	Reviews	Albums	Touring

Reviews

The New Yorker • April 19, 1999

THE NATURAL He always leaves something to remember him by. BY WHITNEY BALLIETT There is a secret emotional center in jazz which has sustained the music since it outgrew its early melodic and rhythmic gaucheries, in the late twenties. This center a kind of aural elixir, reveals itself when an improvised phrase or an entire solo or even a complete number catches you by surprise and sends tremors up your spine. When these lyrical bursts happen in night clubs or at concerts their lovely afterimages inevitably fade. Caught on recordings, though, they last forever.

So here, in no particular order, are some classic recorded beauties: the first twelve or so bars of Louis Armstrongs second solo on both takes of "Some of These Days," played in a revolving half time in his low register and unlike anything else he ever recorded (Columbia; 1929); the eerie, almost surrealistic melody that Paul Gonsalves fashions on the first bridge of a "Caravan" done with Duke Ellington (Fantasy; 1962); Charlie Parker's stunning two-chorus solo on "Funky Blues," replete with an opening now-listen preaching figure, a shivering, sotto-voce run at the start of the second chorus, and a dodging, ascending climactic figure (Verve; 1952); the cluster of soft, keening notes that Joe Lovano plays near the end of "Lament for M," a dirge by Gunther Schuller written in memory of his wife for "Rushhour" (Blue Note; 1995); the Sidney de Paris-Ben Webster-Vic Dickenson-James P. Johnson-Sid Catlett "After You've Gone," certainly as close to a flawless jazz recording as exists (Blue Note; 1944); and all of the remarkable pianist Bill Charlap's "Turnaround," an Ornette Coleman blues that he fills with huge, stuttering chords and saliing-along-the-tonai-edge single-note lines (Criss Cross; 1995).

Indeed, Charlap is a lyrical repository. At thirty-two, he is the best, but least well known, of a swarm of gifted pianists who have appeared in New York in the past ten years or so. He has already filled much of the sizable space once occupied by Bill Evans, who still reverberates almost twenty years after his death. Unlike many of the younger pianists, whose tastes tend to be parochial, Charlap has absorbed every pianist worth listening to in the past fifty years, starting with Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, Duke Ellingron, Jimmy Rowles, Erroll Garner, Nat Cole, and Oscar Peterson, then moving through Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan, and Bill Evans, and finishing with Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, and Kenny Barron. His ballad numbers are unique. He may start with the verse of the song, played ad lib, then move into the melody chorus. He does not rhapsodize. Instead, he improvises immediately, rearranging the chords and the melody line, and using a relaxed, almost implied beat. He may pause for a split second at the end of this chorus and launch a nodding, swinging single-note solo chorus, made up of irregularly placed notes - some off the beat and some behind the beat - followed by connective runs, and note clusters. He closes with a brief, calming recap of the melody. His ballads are meditations on songs, homages to their composers and lyricists. He constantly reins in his up-tempo numbers. He has a formidable technique, but he never shows off, even though he will let loose epic runs, massive staccato chords, racing upper-register tintinnabulations, and, once in a while, some dazzling counterpoint, his hands pitted against each other. His sound shines; each note is rounded. Best of all, in almost every number, regardless of its speed, he leaves us a phrase, a group of irregular notes, an ardent bridge that shakes us.

Charlap has a narrow, handsome face, attentive eyes, and a direct, ready-to-laugh voice. He talks fast, and when he talks about his music he gradually accelerates. Here is what he said recently: "I don't ever remember not playing the piano. Everything was by ear at first, and I'd pick out everything I heard. When a teacher came to the house, I'd charm my way through the lesson. It was very painful and slow for me to learn to read music. The songs of Arlen, Gershwin, Porter, and Berlin were paramount in my house, so jazz is about vocalism for me. Even a drum is vocal. To me, there are three steps in improvisation. The first involves the player's concentration, his heavy thinking. In the second, he becomes almost blase, and he lets his fingers do the walking. And in the third he is detached from what he is doing. He's moving rhe pawns of the music, yet he has become a listener, who's, like, sitting there and watching what he's doing. From this stage, you go on to experience that supreme feeling, that omnipotent feeling at the heart of improvising."

Charlap knocks out both his musical contemporaries and his musical elders, some of whom are almost twice his age. The matchless bassist Michael Moore made a tight duo album with Charlap in 1995 (Concord), and has said of him, "So many players of Bill Charlap's generation haven't digested Jimmy Rowles, maybe haven't even heard of him, one of the greatest pianists. A lot of the young piano players today take themselves so seriously that sometimes their solos turn into complete piano concertos. They eat everything on the musical table and leave nothing for anyone else. But Bill goes right through each tune to the bone. He has a great imagination, and he has lightness and humor, even the pratfall kind of humor. We played a kind of Mafia Christmas party a while back, and when the guests sang the 'Twelve Days of Christmas' Bill played something totally different behind each person. He did Stockhausen behind a guy who couldn't carry a tune, and he played the 'St. Louis Blues' behind a woman who thought she could sing."

The guitarist Gene Bertoncini is another Charlap admirer, He was part of a spectacular trio that included Charlap and the bassist Sean Smith and drew S.R.O. crowds on a 1996 jazz cruise on the S.S. Norway. (Selections from the trio's three spacious performances are available on a Chiaroscuro CD, "Gene Bertoncini with Bill Charlap and Sean Smith.") "What I admire, aside from his playing, is his incredible knowledge of songs," Bertoncini said recently. "Whenever I work with him, he'll say, 'Gene, have you heard this song from 1947, or this song from 1938?' So in that way, although he's only thirty-two, he's an old man."

Born on East Fifty-first Street, in New York, Charlap grew up in a musical and theatrical atmosphere. His mother is the singer Sandy Stewart, and his father, who died when Charlap was seven, was the songwriter Moose Charlap. Moose wrote most of the music, with Carolyn Leigh, for the Mary Martin "Peter Pan" that was on Broadway in the mid-fifties. And he wrote the music, with Eddie Lawrence, for a still lamented 1965 musical called "Kelly," which got terrific reviews in Philadelphia but was disastrously fiddled with at the last minute by its producers and closed in New York alter one night. Lawrence has said, "Moose loved to laugh, and he loved to sing. He had a gravelly, wonderfial voice-a rough kind of thing, like Aznavour. When he died, we were working on a musical about Paul Gauguin." Bill Charlap went to the Town School and to the High School for Performing Arts when it was still in a dilapidated building on West Forty-sixth Street. He spent a year or two at SUNY-Purchase, and he studied classical piano, but, he says, "My classical piano was not authentic. I was speaking classical piano with a jazz accent. A teacher I had asked me why I played everything with street rhythms." Gerry Mulligan hired Charlap in the late eighties, and he has since divided his time between his own trio and random gigs abroad and with the Phil Woods Qintet.

You have to search for Charlap in New York. He did four nights at the Knickerbocker Bar & Grill, on University Place, in January, and he was at Zinno, on West Thirteenth Street, with his trio-Peter Washington on bass and Kenny Washington on drums-for five days, in March. The gig at the Knickerbocker was hard work. Most people go there to eat and drink and talk, and the piano is almost an afterthought. It sits on the floor hard by a low wall that separates the huge main room from the thundering bar. Charlap's first number on his third night was a medium-tempo version of Kurt Weill's "Here I'll Stay." It was full of backpedalling chords, loose, almost atonal single-note lines, and a couple of mercurial arpeggios. The din in the place was palpable, but Charlap's passion for his music was immediately clear in his playing and in his bobbing, tightly masked face, which stayed a foot or so above the keyboard. Six people near the piano clapped at the end of the tune. His next number, Gerry Mulligan's "Curtains," got eight claps, and Irving Berlin's "The Best Thing for You" got ten. Cole Porter's "All Through the Night," played at an up tempo, was the last number in the set and, when it began, a heavy, middle-aged, wool-wrapped Irish couple stood up in the bar to leave, stopped ten feet from the piano, and listened, their big Irish faces still and pleased. They clapped twice before they left, and there were twelve more claps from the main room. Charlap has said of the Knickerbocker, "It's a great place to practice when you're not working that night."

Tn the meantime, before Charlap's next New York gig (with Phil Woods at the Iridium, early in June, and with his trio at Zinno later in the month), find his newest CD, "All Through the Night" (Criss Cross), and listen carefully to the start of the second full chorus on Alec Wilder's "It's So Peaceful in the Country." Charlap, leaving a beautifully chorded and measured melody chorus, steps off into a handful of unevenly spaced single notes, a firm four/four rhythm underneath, and the earth suddenly moves.

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DownBeat • February 99 • Jazz

Should-Be-Better-Knowns

By Zan Stewart

They're the backbone of jazz: the not-well-known but highly skilled journeyman players who work with the big names or make their living doing shows, or maybe even doing club dates. When they're in charge, it's usually at a low-profile room or a late-night set. Often as not, such deserving musicians record for a little label, possibly their own.

Bill Charlap: All Through The Night (Criss Cross 1153; 47:37) 41/2 Stars

Charlap, a vet sideman currently with Phil Woods, is a modernist with deep ties to the past. His mix of, say, Bud Powell, Ahmad Jamal and Bill Evans, is a perfect style for this delightful set of not-often-heard standards and show tunes, where he fits hand-in-glove with the grand team of Peter and Kenny Washington. "Roundabout" is luxuriously slow, Charlap's notes pristine yet emotive. The Porter title track whizzes by, the pianist flowing, while "It's So Peaceful In The Country" is taken at a Sunday-park-stroll pace, with ambling yet elegant piano statements. The bassist and drummer accompany and solo, with customary panache.

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Music Critics Applaud Pianist Bill Charlap

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ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT
BILL CHARLAP

with Peter Washington & Kenny Washington

In the inventive mind of pianist Bill Charlap, the American popular song goes hand in hand with modern jazz. "The great American composers are the popular songwriters and jazz writers," says Charlap. " The craftsmanship of masters like Duke Elllngton and George Gershwin has produced great songs of love and human drama, and there are few young instrumentalists in jazz who are inspring listeners to explore and more actively enjoy this purely American music,"

As a jazz musician, Charlap sets out to preserve these classics in a way that augments the traditional jazz audience. "Through my recordings and live performance, I'm strivlng to give these great songs a new life in the hearts and minds of the listeners." Charlap remarks. As a step toward realizing this vision, the pianist has just released All Through the Night, a recording of titles by great American songwriters which is his third trio project for Criss Cross Jazz.

The concept behind Charlap's new recording and current performances is to reveal the essence of the composition, "In many ways I see the songs from a singer's perspective. The lyrics dictate my approach. Tony Bennett told me something he learned from Art Taturn and that is to make a producilon out of every song you perform. This way of thinking has had a great influence on me."

When you consider that Charlap is the son of Broadway composer Moose Charlap (Peter Pan) and singer Sandy Stewart (Benny Goodman)--and given his powerhouse credentials in the jazz world--it's no surprise that his work explores a synthesis of the greatest elements of American music.

In addition to spending the last three years as the pianist with the Phil Woods quintet, Charlap was a member of the late Gerry Mulligan's quartet in the late '80s, and has played with Benny Carter, Clark Terry, Red Mitchell, Al Grey, Jim Hall, Frank Wess, Warren Vaché, Milt Hinton, Louie Bellson and Grady Tate among many other jazz superstars. Charlap has also been accompanist of choice for several noted vocalists including Tony Bennett and Carol Sloane. "Charlap is the best thing that ever happened to Sloane," reported Rapport magazine.

While Charlap is by no means unknown to jazz fans, it is his performances in the Woods quintet and as leader of his own groups that's attracted the most notice. In review of the pianist's first trio album on CrissCross Jazz, Souvenir (with bassist Scott Colley and drummer Dennis Mackrel), The New York Times music critic, Peter Watrous wrote, "pianist Bill Charlap's Souvenir has ease and elegance that are rarely found in jazz, especially among young musicians."

His next trio date for Criss Cross, Distant Star (with bassist Sean Smith and drummer Bill Stewart) was awarded 41/2 stars in Down Beat and was described as "an absolute must get CD," by Dr. Herb Wang in the Jazz Educators Journal. Now with All Through the Night, his latest for CrissCross, featuring his current working trio, Charlap brings a fresh point of view to the world of American popular song.

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Down Beat • November 1998

by Fred Bouchard

Credit Where Credit's Due

Psychologists say we mirror our influences; idealists add that we cast our own shadow on them. Singer Carol Sloane, a rare yet ripe interpreter of American song, revels and basks in the beneficent sway of those who surround her.

In conversation, the mellow contralto is quick to praise fellow singers, such as Abbey Lincoln's way of floating and Brazilian Leny Andrade's honesty and swing. She raves about favorite piano accompanists/composers: Bill Mays "knows when to display his technical wizardry" and Bill Charlap is "the next Bill Evans." She's performed with piano legends such as Tommy Flanagan, Kenny Barron, Jimmie Rowles and Sir Roland Ranna since catapulting onto the jazz scene in 1960 following her performance at the Newport Jazz Festival.

On album, Sloane continues her homage to fellow jazz musicians. Her latest three CDs on the Concord Jazz label focus on the music of Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald (with Clark Terry cast as Louis Armstrong) and Carmen McRae. Sloane's apparent self-deflection from the limelight is neither undue modesty nor riding coattails. This old-fashioned girl from Rhode Island simply loves to give credit where it's due.

"I don't try to sound like Carmen, Frank, or Ella," Sloane says from her Boston area home, not long after two quietly stunning weeks at Manhattan's Rainbow and Stars. "I heard Ella when I was very young, and knew her voice was the perfect voice. I always aspired to that perfect intonation, that diction. And if I'm praised for reading lyrics, it's because Carmen taught me."

In every spirited lyric and bandstand gesture, Sloane's true magnanimity of spirit pours forth. She understands what she's singing about and lays an easygoing, humanist mantle on her songs. The end result is nothing but pure Sloane.

"When I hear it, something snaps in my head and heart," she says about the process of finding her voice in the standards. "I know I need to sing a new song for at least a year before I record it."

Though she's peachy with a trio and the Sinatra album sports all-star nonet charts, Sloane anticipates increased symphonic work with Boston Pops and New York Pops. "Pianist Mike Renzi - we go back to the '50s - is writing some superb charts for large orchestra," she says.

And with her fine sense of musical intimacy, Sloane can shrink a concert hall down to a cozy boite.

-Fred Bouchard

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Down Beat • December 1997

by Thomas Conrad

Jazz • Throng of 3s

Bill Charlap: Distant Star (Criss Cross 1131; 53:16: 4 1/2 stars)

Bill Charlap is probably the least-known pianist in this grouping, but his trio is the best at casting spells. There is a magic peculiar to piano trios: the coming into being of an inner-directed world within a triangle upon which the listeners eavesdrops, and atmosphere so rapt that even up tempo pieces feel like ballads. Bill Evans could create that hush, and Keith Jarret, and Michael Petrucciani once, and a few others, including Bill Charlap. You hear it on "Last Night When We Were Young": Bill Stewart's brushes softly sweeping and Sean Smith's huge bass notes suspended in space and Charlap slowing almost to a stop to pick out the message with infinite care. Charlap also goes outside of time with a revelatory solo meditation on "The Heather On The Hill." Like all the best piano trio recordings, Distant Star is a collaborative achievement. Smith is the pulse of a self-sufficient, organic whole and Stewart is an intelligent energy, never still. Max Bolleman recorded this session at Systems Two in Brooklyn and is a fourth collaborator, providing a tactile sonic portrait of three instruments.

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Entertainment Weekly • January 1997

JAZZ

Various Artists Jazz Celebration-A tribute to Carl Jefferson (Concord Jazz)

Virtually all of Concord's recording artists, from Rosemary Clooney to Marian McPartland, donated their services for this four-CD set to fund a music scholarship in memory of company founder.president Jefferson. Not all 83 musicians are steller, but the guitar heights of Laurindo Almeida and Charlie Byrd are breathtaking, and saxist Scott Hamilton's full bodied tone is immensely satisfying. Of the younger lesser-known artists, pianist Bill Charlap scores a direct hit to the heart. B+
-CD

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Gramophone • March 1996

Bill Charlap - Souvenir
Criss Cross

It is good to have two young leaders working discernibly and logically from palable jazz tradition. Bill Charlap is one of the most sparkling of contemporary piano soloists. Currently with Phil Woods's quartet, he previously distinguished himself during two years with Gerry Mulligan and can be heard on Mulligan's "Lonesome Boulevard" album. This, his first trio album, shows that left to his own devices he is a quirky, hard-swinging player who is closer to the Eddie Costa tradition than anyone else has come since that unique pianist died in 1962. His lines have a clarity and succinctness which make this the most satisfying piano album I have heard for a long time. The opening Ornette Coleman blues, Turnaround, is infused with Costa, and there is a gentle interpretatier of Benny Carter's Souvenir Alone Together starts gently too, but swiftely becomes a 12-minute tour de force. Godchild is a tip of the hat to Mulligan's "Birth of the Cool" days and the album closes with an emotional version of Phil Woods's tribute, Goodbye Mr. Evans.

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San Francisco Examiner July 12, 1995

Charlap Slays the East Bay

New York jazz pianist brilliant in two outings
by Philip Elwood

Pianist Bill Charlap has been making waves on the New York music scene for a number of years, playing as a soloist, bandsman and vocal accompanist. And thoough he has played and toured in groups led by such as Gerry Mulligan, Benny Carter and most recently, Phil Woods, as well as performing with singers Helen Merrill, Sheila Jordan, Barry Manilow and Sandy Stewart (his mother), Charlap has not - until last weekend - made his mark on the Bay Area jazz scene.

However, he certainly establisbed himslf locally with his stunning Saturday performances at Concord's Carl Jefferson Tribute and Sunday at Maybeck Recital Hall, where he played in duet with legendary New York string.bassist, Michael Moore, another whom the West Coast seldom hears.

The Maybeck gig,to be issued on a Concord Jazz CD later this year, "was in fact Moore's, but the magnificant, empathetic interplay of bass and piano created a cohesive duo sound that defined the term "playing as one."

Charlap's touch and uncanny ability to phase in and out of tonal colors (whether a single note or in chords) makes his every phrase, every solo, inimitable and disiinctly his own. That he is able to use the keyboard in such a perceptive manner when working with Moore - considered amont the finest of bassist - places Charlap high in th ranks of outstanding contemporary jazz pianists.

On "Out of Nowhere," with Moore's resonant bass waIking delicately in the background, Charlap's improvised piano lines seemed to float over the melody; on "Seven Come Eleven" (the Charlie Christian-Benny Goodman chart), Charlap somehow made the Maybeck Steinway sound like Lionel Hampton's vibes playing against Moore's guitar-like bass runs.

The duo's variations on "Just You, Just Me" featured bowed and plucked bass, double-time passages (some played in unison, others as solo-exchanges) and soaring keyboard flights of amazing inventiveness.

Moore and Charlap had great fun in mixing up their material - at one point playing "Limehouse Blues," then a Gustav Mahler song, then Duke Ellington's "Cottontail" in sequence.

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Jazz Times • July/August 1994

Bill Charlap
Along With Me
Chiaroscuro CRD 326 (72:22)

This collection of pianistic gems is the handiwork of Bill Charlap whose "ravishing harmonic sense, under-standing of songs, and intricate and mercurial improvisations." to borrow a few of Richard Rodney Bennett's well-chosen words from the liners, dazzle and delight.

Charlap's melodic charm. insoucient swing and harmonic élan unfold with a deceptive ease recalling both Bill Evans and George Shearing. Also significant is Charlap's economy of means. Regardless of tempo his music breathes. Indeed, if Stan Getz had played piano he just might have sounded like Bill Charlap.

Here, the pianist addresses standards ranging from Parker's"Donna Lee" to Bernstein's "Lonely Town." There's also an auto-biographic monologue, "Jazzspeak,'. in which Charlap tells us about his life as the son of composer Moose Charlap and singer Sandy Stewart. He also tells us about the tunes and his estimable colleagues, principally bassist Sean Smith and drummer Ron Vincent. An intriguing and useful innovation.

---Chuck Berg

JazzTimes- CD Reviews
Michael Moore/Bill Charlap - "Concord Duo Series, Vol. Nine"

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