TICKLING THE IVORIES
A look at some recent solo piano releases
Jean-Michel Pilc/Follow Me, Joe Sample/Soul Shadows,
Sir Roland Hanna/Tributaries, and Herbie Hancock/The Piano

Jean-Michel Pilc has created a stir with his recordings Welcome Home and Cardinal Points. The first featured Pilc in a trio setting brilliantly reimagining such jazz standards as “So What,” “Solitude,” and “Giant Steps.” The followup added soprano sax, electric bass, and percussion and entirely featured Pilc’s original compositions. Now Pilc offers a solo piano disc, Follow Me. The disc features both Pilc’s reworking of classic tunes and some of his own compositions played solo. It also demonstrates the influence of French songs on Pilc, including such romantic fare as “Les Amants D’Un Jour,” “Vous Qui Passez Sans Me Voir,” and “Les Copains D’Abord.” These French folk and cabaret songs are undoubtedly as important to Pilc’s sense of melody and harmony as such jazz influences as Bill Evans and Miles Davis. Lest anyone forget, it is the words of French poet Jacques Prevert that are set to the tune “Autumn Leaves,” a venerable jazz piano standard that is heard here.

Pilc has mastered the ability to deconstruct complex harmonic and melodic material in such a way as to render it surprising yet still recognizable. Never resorting to cliché, the pianist does not allow his audience to settle into complacency, either. His versions of standards seldom take the listener in the direction expected for very long without a sudden shift of some kind, a pulling up of roots. In the hands of a less skilled musician, the results could be disorganized and scattered, but Pilc creates instead a musical experience akin to a roller coaster ride: it may at times appear that he’s not certain where he’s going or if he’s going to make it, but in fact the listener is always in safe hands.

Take Pilc’s rendition of the Fats Waller classic “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” Scores of pianists have covered this, but few introduce the elements that Pilc injects into the mix: a discordant left hand playing in the upper registers of the piano at the beginning, followed by a solo with walking bass. Pilc resists the urge to break into a stride rhythm, instead taking the piece into a romantic fantasia that alternates smartly with a rhythm-based improvisation which keeps the piece moving forward. Pilc’s improvisations are truly in the vein of pianists like Willie “The Lion” Smith, incorporating plenty of classical European elements and never letting the cleverness of the arrangement get in the way of its musical quality. Each of these performances is a showpiece, three or four minutes of lean parlor piano improvisations on well-known songs, assuming that your parlor pianist happens to be talented, possessed of great technique and a knowledge of American jazz as well as classical music.

That same feel, of solid, economical arrangements of classic tunes, is present on Joe Sample’s recent solo piano disc, Soul Shadows. Soul Shadows benefits from a great song selection, with the soulful Sample tackling trad jazz material like the protest tune “How You Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm?,” Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer,” and Jelly Roll Morton’s “Shreveport Stomp.” Sample brings this music alive with arrangements that don’t treat the songs like museum relics, yet still treats the material with respect. Ain’t Misbehavin’” gets treated as a smoky, bluesy ballad while “Avalon” becomes a stomp. Sample gives a lesson in Harlem stride piano on his version of “I Got Rhythm.” It’s on ballads that Sample really astounds—his takes on Ellington’s “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good” and Gershwin’s “Embraceable You” both reveal a depth that couldn’t have been extrapolated from Sample’s funkier soul-tinged fusion side.

Houston native Sample plays with a solid, straightforward style that embraces the dignity of his material and which will connect with many listeners who don’t generally listen to solo jazz piano. He’s clearly less abstract than Pilc and less romantic than Roland Hanna. With Sample one marvels not at the innovation of the performance but at the solid, craftsman-like execution of the song. Soul Shadows is an excellent set of performances and will surprise many who had written Sample off as lost in the morass of smooth jazz.

 

>>Roland Hanna/Tributaries & Herbie Hancock/The Piano