Galper enjoying ‘high-risk’ trio
Noted sideman, band leader brings show to Yardbird
New York’s Hal Galper has been playing jazz piano for over 50 years now, and listening to the master musician interact with his acclaimed trio you sense that he hasn’t lost any of the artistic enthusiasm that got him started.
“I feel like the luckiest guy in the world working with these guys,” Galper offered in a recent interview. Bassist Jeff Johnson and drummer John Bishop have worked with the pianist for six years now and collaborated together in other bands for close to 20 years.
“The rapport is a lot of fun. It’s a very high-risk band. We take a lot of chances.”
One thing that keeps all of them involved is the trio’s approach to playing bop jazz. It’s very accessible, even exciting music, caught up in a style known as rubato, an Italian term that literally means “to rob” notes. Music dictionaries explain it as freely slowing down or speeding up the tempo of a tune without changing the essential pulse.
“In most jazz groups you have the rhythm section in the background. That clarifies whoever is up front in the foreground, but in this trio it’s all foreground. We’re still playing bebop but it’s a group improv where we’re following harmony, not the meter. We’re playing freely on tunes, trying to play without intention, to let our instincts take us wherever it goes, so it’s very spontaneous.”
You can hear that in the mix of Galper originals and standard tunes that fill out the trio’s excellent new disc, Trip the Light Fantastic (2011, Origin Records), which just got a four-star review in the jazz journal
Downbeat. They will be tapping those tunes and even newer material in Edmonton Saturday.
Beyond any intricacies of style, Galper has always done his part to help define the piano trio as a particular group format within the jazz tradition, taking after his original influence, pioneer Ahmad Jamal. You can hear his gradual progress as a leader in many trio sessions for labels like Concord, Fabola and Origin.
Born in 1938 in Salem, Mass., Galper had classical piano lessons as a kid but he wasn’t very interested in music until he was introduced to jazz in high school.
After initial studies at Boston’s Berklee College, he began to chisel out the foundation of the rubato style he plays today working with saxophonist Sam Rivers in the mid-1960s.
His career has seen many highlights since as a sideman for the likes of Chet Baker, John Scofield, Stan Getz and most notably, for the decade he spent in Phil Woods’ Grammy-winning
“We’re playing freely on tunes, trying to play without intention.”
Hal Galper
quintet during the 1980s. He last played Edmonton in 1993.
Today Galper commutes between his home in the Catskill Mountains and New York to teach at The New School when he’s not on tour or teaching in a new online endeavour, but being onstage tapping into the moment still offers the most satisfaction.
“Now I feel like I’m at home with myself. I started my trio in the 1990s and it took me 10 years to find my voice. I’m very lucky to have found a drummer and bass player who want to take this adventure with me.”
The Hal Galper Trio plays the Yardbird Suite (102nd Street and 86th Avenue) Saturday at 9 p.m.
Tickets are $20 for members, $24 for guests, from Ticketmaster (1-855985-5000 or www.ticketmaster.ca) or at the door.
We ekend jazz
Composer Cole Porter contributed some of the best-loved pages to the popular repertoire. Drummer-leader Tyler Hornby leads an all-star band of Alberta’s best to explore that treasury of songs Friday at the Yardbird. Singer Johanna Sillanpaa, Jim Brenan, Chris Andrew and Rubim de Toledo are along for the ride at 9 p.m. Tickets are $16 members, $20 guests.
Calgary-based pop-jazz vocalist Johanna Sillanpaa heads up her own concert date Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Sherwood Park’s Festival Place, celebrating the release of Make of Me.
Former Edmonton TV personality and singer Dawn Chubai is back to sing jazz at Jeffrey’s Cafe & Wine Bar Friday, while guitarist-singer Harley Symington plays Saturday only (both nights the cover is $10).