Famed jazz trio not afraid to break the mold
Goldings, Bernstein and Stewart `keep it fresh' with more than jazz and funk
On paper, Goldings, Bernstein and Stewart looks more like a buttoned-down law firm than a hip jazz trio. But on the bandstand, organist Larry Goldings, guitarist Peter Bernstein and drummer Bill Stewart have spent some three decades redefining expectations for a format that was once indelibly tied to blues and soul.
It's not that they're averse to greasy grooves. All three players have spent serious time accompanying funk maestros like Maceo Parker, Lou Donaldson and John Scofield. But Goldings came to the group more oriented toward the piano, which led to a trio approach “that wasn't an organ-specific thing,” he said from his home in Los Angeles, where he's a prolific composer for film and television (when he's not on tour with James Taylor).
“Basically we're still playing tunes not at all associated with the classic organ repertoire,” he said. “It's very democratic, and we all write for the band. We're all really good friends and have been through a lot together.”
With a new album “Perpetual Pendulum” out at the end of the month on Smoke Sessions Records, the trio settles into the SFJazz Center's Joe Henderson Lab for eight shows over four nights, today through Sunday.
Goldings and Bernstein met as high school students at the Eastman School of Music's summer jazz program in 1984. By the end of the decade they were ambitious young players in New York City, where they connected with Stewart, who was making a name for himself with guitar star John Scofield.
They first played together as a trio at an uptown dive called Augie's, which now houses the jazz club Smoke and its Smoke Sessions Records. The oneoff gig turned into a yearlong Thursday night residency, launching an enduring collective ensemble.
They've released about a dozen albums as a trio and acquired an expansive fan base. A video of a 2013 show at the Village Vanguard has garnered more than 400,000 YouTube views. While it's fair to say that the trio is more than the sum of its parts, each of the players has thrived on his own.
One of jazz's most sought after drummers, Stewart is known for his melodic approach to the kit and his keen ear for lapidary textures. He's recorded with many of jazz's most venturesome improvisers, and aside from the trio he's best known for his ongoing relationship with Scofield. (Stewart is back in town with Scofield's Combo 66 at the SFJazz Center on April 16.)
He credits his bandmates' love of songs with informing the trio's sinewy lyricism. “Pete and Larry are real students of standard tunes, Tin Pan Alley and the jazz repertoire,” Stewart said. “We all have input and chime in about what we like to do. It does feel like a real collective.”
Part of what makes the trio so fascinating is that group's sound has evolved by a process of subtraction. Goldings learned the Hammond B-3 organ while touring with saxophonist Maceo Parker, who shaped James Brown's music in the 1960s and ParliamentFunkadelic in the 1970s, which is to say funk's Alpha and Omega. But it was working with Scofield and drum innovator Jack DeJohnette in Trio Beyond in the mid-2000s that sparked an epiphany about avoiding his instrument's conventional role.
“In the middle of the tour Jack said, `You know, you don't have to play the left hand all the time. You don't have to play bass,' ” Goldings recalled. “What do you mean? It's scary, because then what do I do? I realized whatever I play, they're going to do something that supports it. But that's a large degree of trust.”
Trust is what defines the trio with Bernstein and Stewart. “It's the group where I feel most at home and most free to be myself musically and personally,” said Goldings, who noted that the trio has continued to find musical paths that diverge from organ combo conventions.
“The older I get the more realize I don't have to do certain things because it might be expected,” he said. “We don't have to play a shuffle or a blues all night. That instrumentation has a lot of possibilities that come down to the musicians and their ideas. Nobody wants to be too predictable. We want to keep it fresh.”
No matter where Goldings, Bernstein and Stewart take their music there's one certainty. Like the object referred to by the title of their new album “Perpetual Pendulum,” they never stop swinging.