Caili O’Doherty’s music lets you hear where she’s been
New York pianist Caili O’Doherty writes flowing melodies that seem to follow the contours of unheard lyrics. That’s not an accident. The startlingly mature 23year-old jazz musician realized that to find her voice as a composer, she needed to tap into the rhythms, pitches and cadences that people use in conversation.
Herdebutalbum“Padme” is a highly impressive introduction to an artist who already has a world of music under her belt, courtesy of several visionary mentors. Growing up in Portland, Oregon, she came under the strict tutelage of trumpeter Thara Memory, who earned a Grammy Award collaborating with another former student, bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spalding.
Memory not only turned O’Doherty onto jazz while she attended the rigorous Arts & Communications Magnet in Oregon, “he had us do all these different activities, from Ghanaian drum lessons with the master percussionist Obo Addy to salsa dance classes, so we could really understand the rhythms,” she says.
He also encouraged his students to compose, and when O’Doherty found her tunes were too busy, “with a lot of notes and not a lot of pauses,” she started writing lyrics to set to music. “Then I’d discard the lyrics and use the melody as it was,” she says.
When Panamanian piano master Danilo Pérez recruited the 16-year-old for Berklee College of Music’s Global Jazz Institute, she finished high school a year early and moved to Boston at 17. The elite program not only meant she studied and played with jazz stars like Dave Liebman, Terri Lyne Carrington, John Patitucci and Joe Lovano, she also performed internationally on tours sponsored by the U.S. State Department. “Padme” is informed by the time she spent in Colombia, Togo, Benin and Panama.
“Danilo would have us do these exercises where we’d talk with each other,” O’Doherty says. “What an amazing idea! We all speak differently. When we’d be traveling I started to really hone in on the different languages and different rhythms I’d hear people speaking with.”
O’Doherty celebrates the album’s release and makes her Bay Area debut as a bandleader with a series of gigs around the state including July 4 performances at the Fillmore Jazz Festival and Jupiter in Berkeley. She plays Café Stritch on Sunday, and Kuumbwa on July 9. On July 10, she plays the San Pedro Square Market as part of San Jose Jazz’s free concert series.
All of these performances feature her tight-knit quartet with bassist Zach Brown,
CAILI,