A radio jazz program – except live
Veteran jazz guitarist John Pizzarelli brings his living room to The Egg
John Pizzarelli has always been more than just a fine jazz guitarist with amazing dexterity and an impeccable sense of swing. He’s a guardian of the Great American Songbook and also has a special way of taking other American popular songs and bringing them into the jazz lexicon.
He’s held company with icons like Benny Goodman, Les Paul, Rosemarie Clooney, Zoot Sims, Bill Frisell and, of course, his father Bucky Pizzarelli, himself a guitar hero. His records not only keep jazz standards alive, but he’s done tributes to Nat Cole, Frank Sinatra, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Paul Mccarton ney. He has appeared on records by Ricky Lee Jones and Natalie Cole, among others, and won a Grammy Award in the best traditional pop vocal album category as co-producer of James Taylor’s “American Standard” album in 2021.
There’s more.
He’s an outstanding singer, a raconteur, a humorist (dig his book, “World
a String: A Musical Memoir”) and a radio show co-host with his wife, Jessica Molaskey, with Radio Deluxe, a weekly program broadcast on stations across the country and in Australia and Canada. Locally, it’s a weekly feature on WAMC 90.3 FM at 2 p.m. Saturday and 8 p.m. Tuesday.
A version of that show is what they’ll do Saturday at The Egg when they present “Radio Deluxe Live!” It will air in segments on future shows, the guitarist said.
“Radio Deluxe” is normally recorded in their home. They sometimes just spin records and sometimes have guests. In Albany, they will have a full band doing live music. This is rare. Six years ago, they did the show live at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, Mass., and in 2009 it was a segment at the Tanglewood Jazz Festi
val.
“I was raised by a jazz musician who came from the Benny Goodman, Nat Cole school, and also played on record dates with Sinatra and Ray Charles and people like Tony Bennett,” said the guitarist of Radio Deluxe. “That is sort of central to what we play on the air. But Jessica has a very strong Broadway background, having been in 12 shows and worked with Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince and a lot of great directors over the years. So there’s a whole Broadway component that Jessica brings to the table. We’re also children of the ‘60s and ‘70s and the great music that came out of that. So that has become a part of what we like to play, too.
“So you’ll hear everything from new Broadway
music to old cast albums, to Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra and Oscar Peterson, Nat Cole. Then, you have all the new people like Tierney Sutton and Kurt Elling, and Christian Mcbride and Benny Green ... Then also, on any given week, you can hear segments of Joni Mitchell or Paul Mccartney,” he added. “So that’s what I think makes it sort of unique . ... We’ll even say, ‘Did we go too far away from where we originally started?’ What makes it sort of fun is that there’s a little something for everybody every week.”
For The Egg date, there will be some living room furniture brought on stage to give the show its natural, at-home feel and also between-song banter. Pizzarelli is an affable host, bright and quickwitted, with a comedian’s timing. Molaskey is a lively partner and foil. At Tanglewood, their daughter
Maddie, then 11, sat in the “living room” part of the stage reading a book. Now 24, she is a singer/songwriter/performer and will be part of the show. The band, all stellar musicians, will consist of Matt Munisteri on guitar, Isaiah J. Thompson on piano, Aaron
Weinstein on violin and Jay Leonhart on bass.
Another big deal for Pizzarelli this year is the release on his new album, “Stage & Screen,” due out April 21 on Palmetto Records. It features his trio playing songs spanning nearly a century. It’s his first recording since 2020’s “Better Days Ahead,” a solo guitar collection of Pat Metheny music he recorded at home during the pandemic.
The new release is “just songs from the stage and the screen. Some new ones and some old ones. It’s my first time in the studio (post-pandemic). And actually, the big news about it is that it been 40 years since my first record (“I’m Hip (Please Don’t Tell My Father”) recorded in May of 1983 as a singer. So, this is 40 years later, still trying to get it right.”
Singing or not, it’s still all about the guitar for Pizzarelli and the legacy he carried from his father.
“I think about him all the time when I’m playing. And it’s nice to be able to honor him in a piece that he played. I know so many of his guitar arrangements that I can play at the drop of a hat. It’s something that’s always on my mind when I’m playing. The reason I’m here is because of him and my mother.”
Even when he recorded the complex Metheny music, “there were moments when I was thinking my father was saying, ‘Slow down. Take your time on these passages.’ All these little pieces of advice are still always there. It is a part of what goes on.”
As for Radio Deluxelive, “What we try to do with these kinds of things, when you have so many people, is to try to make it formally informal, have some laughs and then play some music and really make it a comfortable and fun evening,” Pizzarelli said.
In 2009 at Tanglewood, he quipped to the audience, “This is like Sundays at the Pizzarellis’, but without the eggplant.”
Reminded of those words, Pizzarelli remarked with a chuckle, “Maybe I’ll bring some eggplant this time.”