Eigsti back home to aid others
Though he’s now firmly ensconced in New York City, Menlo Park native Taylor Eigsti continues to enjoy a professional relationship with the Bay Area that extends all of the way back to his days as a child prodigy.
Whether opening for vocalist/pianist Diana Krall at Villa Montalvo’s Garden Theatre, headlining a Jazz at Filoli concert in Woodside or helping to launch Blue Note Napa as a member of superstar trumpeter Chris Botti’s band, the 33-year-old has been gigging locally all his adult — and even a chunk of his pre-adult — life.
“There are a lot of really fun places to play in the Bay Area. I love coming back and playing,” he says, by phone from a tour stop with Botti in New
Hampshire. “I play in the Bay Area once every two or three months, at least.”
Gigs in the Bay Area afford him time to visit his mother, who still lives in his childhood home, as well as old friends. Eigsti comes back every summer for the Stanford Jazz Workshop and Festival, where he started as a young student, quickly transitioned into being a student teacher and has long since been a faculty member.
Now the jazz pianist/ composer is back just in time for the holidays, slated to perform two consecutive nights at the Piedmont Piano Company in Oakland’s Uptown neighborhood — unaccompanied on Friday, Dec. 22 and then leading a trio the following night.
His solo show is particularly special as it’s a benefit for victims of the Wine Country fire victims. The effort is in addition to Eigsti’s participation in a fire relief concert in Orinda back in late October.
“I’m lucky to be performing all the time, but when you have the opportunity to perform and you know that the effects of that performance could help in its own way, it’s a really good feeling,” he says.
Playing at Piedmont Piano Company, a store that carries the highestend models and provides a venue where artists are given a choice of which instrument they’ll use, is the perfect setting for such a concert, too, he says. Without anyone else on the bandstand, “all of the subtleties of everything are just extra heightened,” he points out, “so it really helps to have a good piano.”
The solo piano format, of course, puts the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic responsibilities all at his fingertips.
“I have a love/hate relationship with solo piano,” he admits, with a warm laugh. “One of my favorite things — if not maybe my favorite thing — about playing music is sharing that experience with these people that you’re playing with. Listening, reacting, feeding off things in the present moment are just lovely.”
For his trio date, Eigsti will be joined by double bassist Zachary Ostroff and drummer Jason Lewis, who Eigsti has performed with “off and on for about 20 years.” The pair represent multiple generations of musicians and also has deep local ties, with Ostroff currently earning his master’s at Stanford and Lewis a longtime South Bay resident.
“Taylor is arguably the best pianist of his generation,” says drummer Eric Harland, a former SFJazz Collective member and bandleader for Voyager, of which Eigsti is also a member. “He’s always striving to give you the best, no matter how it affects him. And he has the amazing orchestrating skills to hook up any situation.”
Come 2018, Eigsti will be back with Botti at SFJazz Center from Jan. 9 through Jan. 14 (the piano chair in Botti’s group rotates among three former prodigies — Eigsti, onetime San Leandro resident Geoffrey Keezer and, most recently, Eldar Djangirov, who was Eigsti’s classmate at USC). Eigsti also plans to perform as a soloist with the El Camino Youth Symphony playing Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” next year.
Looking ahead to 2020, fans should expect plenty of surprises. For one, he plans to perform a new composition with the Community School of Music and Arts in Mountain View for their recently awarded Hewlett Foundation grant. “I have no idea, whatsoever, what it’s going to sound like,” he admits, “but I’m not supposed to!”