THE JAZZ TRIO OF PIANO, BASS AND DRUMS HAS BEEN THE FOUNDATION OF JAZZ SINCE MODERN TIMES. PIANIST BILL CHARLAP HAS BECOME ONE OF IT’S MASTERS, AND HIS 20+ YEAR TEAM OF BASSIST PETER WASHINGTON AND DRUMMER KENNY WASHINGTON HAVE LITERALLY SET THE STANDARD, CREATING A CATALOGUE OF SONGBOOKS AND STANDARDS THAT HAVE EARNED BOTH ACCOLADES AND GRAMMY AWARDS.
HIS LATEST TRIO RELEASE, STREET OF DREAMS, IS ON JUST ABOUT EVERYONE’S TOP TEN LIST FOR BEST ALBUM OF THE YEAR. MEANWHILE, HIS 2004 TRIBUTE TO LEONARD BERNSTEIN, SOMEWHERE, HAS SUCH LONG LASTING LEGS THAT CHARLAP HAS BEEN SELECTED TO CELEBRATE THE THEATRE SONGS OF BERNSTEIN ON JANUARY 29 AT THE NJPAC WITH HIS TRIO, AUTHOR JAMIE BERNSTEIN AND HOST TED CHAPIN.
IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN CHARLAP WITH HIS TRIO, YOU’RE MISSING A JOURNEY INTO THE CLASSIEST INTERPRETATION OF STANDARDS. HIS CATALOGUE OVERFLOWS WITH RICH INTERPRETATIONS FROM THE GIANTS OF JAZZ AND BROADWAY, WITH HIS LATEST ALBUM A PERFECT ENTRY INTO HIS WORLD.
WE RECENTLY HAD A CHANCE TO CONVERSE WITH MR. CHARLAP, WHO WAS ON HIS WAY TO FURTIVELY PURCHASE CHRISTMAS PRESENTS FOR HIS WIFE, RENEE ROSNESS. AS WITH HIS MUSIC, CHARLAP WAS FOUND TO BE WARM, WISE, CLASSY AND CLEVER.
YOUR DAD MOOSE CHARLAP WAS A BROADWAY COMPOSER (“FIRST IMPRESSION”, “MY FAVORITE SONG”). WHAT DID YOU LEARN OR PICK UP FROM HIM ABOUT COMPOSITION AS YOU GREW UP?
ABOUT COMPOSITION AS YOU GREW UP?
I wouldn’t say that I learned about composing directly from him because he died when I was 7 years old.
I can compose, but I don’t consider myself a composer, not like my wife (Renee Rosnes) who is very prolific and can really write all kinds of things, from orchestral music on.
What did I learn? I learned what it was like to live with somebody who was deeply dedicated to his craft, shot out of a cannon in terms of energy, and who also was a true “theater” composer.
I don’t do what my parents did, at all; it was a totally different area of music that they did. He would sing and play the piano, not like a performer, but like a songwriter.
But Stephen Sondheim said to me one time, that there’s a record of a composer singing and playing his own music that he plays for people when he wants them to know what musical theater is all about, and it was by my father. He’s playing songs from Kelly, which was an audition tape that Eddie Laurence put out on lp after my father’s death as a tribute to him. He died really young; he was in his 40s and was a juvenile diabetic.
I learned the energy of not waiting for inspiration. The energy of not having to wait for that “special time” but actually to just sit down, write and produce in an inspired sort of way.
It was like “We need a show for a female ingenue, and it’s the penultimate number of the first act. Plus, we need a dance number, and by the way, she only has a vocal range of a third. And we need it by four o’clock. Bye!” (laughs) “Jerry Robbins has already written the dance number”
It was like that. That was a great thing with my parents because I saw that it wasn’t just the luxury of doing something that you love, but also the devotion to craft so that you can do it in a professional way.
That’s what I learned from watching my father.
********
I learned (from my father) the energy of not waiting for inspiration…of not having to wait for that “special time” but actually to just sit down, write and produce in an inspired sort of way
*********
I’VE ALWAYS LOVED YOUR BLUE NOT DUET RECORD WITH YOUR MOM (LOVE IS HERE TO STAY). WHAT ADVICE HAS SHE GIVEN YOU FOR SUPPORTING A VOCALIST?
A lot of these lessons are unspoken. A lot of the musical things that I learned from my parents was as natural as breathing. They never said “You need to do this” or “Don’t play this”; it was actually just listening to *her sing a song, and the purity of how she approached the lyric and melody that made me accompany her in the sense that the painter fills in the color, and enrich everything that she’s sing, but not to draw attention to yourself; I learned to make the whole of the piece, the voice, the words, the melody, the harmony, the touch, all of it together-that was how I tried to think. I actually don’t really think at all; it’s just listening in language.
My mom is a wonderful interpreter. That record is a very “interior” record. It’s a very quiet record; it’s the way that we would sing at home. Some people thought that it was sophorific, like “How come there are no tempos?”. There is a tempo on some of the tunes, but really “sotto voce”-I wouldn’t really even call them “ballads”. It was singing the song and telling the story of the song in not really a theatrical way. It’s not necessarily “jazz” singing; it’s just American Singing with good feeling. The song was paramount. It was learning from her kind of singing that informs my playing. I’m always playing the lyrics.
********
“the purity of how she approached the lyric and melody that made me accompany her in the sense that the painter fills in the color, and enrich everything that she’s sing, but not to draw attention to yourself; I learned to make the whole of the piece, the voice, the words, the melody,the harmony, the touch, all of it together-that was how I tried to think. I actually don’t really think at all; it’s just listening in language”
********
AS LONG AS WE’RE TALKING ABOUT FAMILY, HOW HAS YOUR WIFE CHANGED YOUR PLAYING STYLE?
She’s given me more poise, and she’s helped me get rid of that which is superfluous.
It’s a great way the Renee plays; she never wastes a note and she has a great natural ability to recognized and sense the compositional structure in her improvising, her playing and her writing. All of those things help me focus with my language.
Of course, living with another musician who has a finely wrought melodic and harmonic language makes what is different about us shine even more. I can hear it better, like “I could do this” or “she could do this” and neither one is right or wrong, but just different.
********
“I saw that it wasn’t just the luxury of doing something that you love, but also the devotion to craft so that you can do it in a professional way”
********
YOU ARE DOING A TRIBUTE TO LEONARD BERNSTEIN CONCERT, BUT BACK IN 2003, YOU DID THE SOMEWHERE ALBUM, WHICH WAS YOUR TAKE ON HIS WEST SIDE STORY. HOW HAS THE 18 YEAR DIFFERENCE CHANGED YOUR APPROACH TO HIS COMPOSITIONS?
First, we’ve grown as a trio a great deal.
As much chemistry and empathies that we had at the get-go (and we had so much immediately), it’s only grown. I think there’s much more depth as to how we play the music.
We’re always improvising; improvisation is paramount to everything that we do. At the same time, I think that we have jumped from a higher height to a deeper end of the pool. (laughs)
We keep going to a higher diving board, and the water gets deeper each time. And, we’re getting better at making a really nice dive.
*******
“I’m always playing the lyrics”
*******
BEING TOGETHER AS A TRIO FOR SO MANY YEARS IS A RARE THING THESE DAYS
We’ve stayed together; we haven’t changed one member of The Beatles. (laughs) Unlike Yes!
HOW DO YOU ACCOMPLISH THAT? ARE YOU GOOD FRIENDS? YOU LIVE CLOSE BY? ONE OF YOU KNOWS WHERE THE BONES ARE BURIED?
Probably all of those things, but really the main thing is that musically it still is a challenge for us, it’s still fresh for us, it still continues to grow.
We now have quite a lot of repertoire; we know so many pieces and have so many things that we can draw on that every night is different. We don’t play the same set; we’re changing all of the time.
What keeps us together? We love playing together. We haven’t gotten bored; in fact it’s become more exciting. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t stay together, and there wouldn’t be a reason to stay together.
It’s like a great marriage that continues to grow. You have more layers of understanding, more layers of depth and even more things that you’ve forgotten about that aren’t even important anymore that once you thought were important.
A band makes a band.
********
“We keep going to a higher diving board, and the water gets deeper each time. And, we’re getting better at making a really nice dive”
********
YOU LOVE PLAYING SONGBOOKS. IS THERE A SONGBOOK THAT IS MORE CHALLENGING THAN OTHERS?
No. They all have different challenges.
You’re mostly talking about the great theater writers. Some, like Duke Ellington or Hoagy Carmichael are not, but most do. Kern, Berlin, Porter, Rogers, Arlen, Gershwin all have different challenges.
Playing an Arlen song is not like playing a Gershwin song. Playing a Bernstein song is not like playing a Gershwin song.
Bernstein is more true-composed. There is less of a blueprint and more of an actual complete composition. It’s not just “Bo-oy, Bo-oy, crazy Bo-oy” but (synocopating in bebop) “Bo-o-oy, Bo-o-oy” . There’s a whole bunch of stuff underneath there that, if you don’t play in ‘Bernstein’, you’re missing some of it; you miss some of the visceral rhythmic quality that he had in the music.
Bernstein wrote a beautiful essay which is an imaginary conversation with himself. It’s actually a conversation with his imaginary agent. The ‘agent’ asks him “Why don’t you just write a nice Gershwin tune? Why do you always have to write this complicated music with all of these little jokes for musicians in it?”
*********
“Bernstein’s music comes from the other side of the tracks”
*********
Bernstein finally gets to the point of saying, “You know what? This is what I write, this is what he wrote, and I can’t write that anymore than he wrote this. This is what I do”.
Bernstein is unique because of what I think he wrote symphonies before he wrote songs. Gershwin wrote songs before he did “Rhapsody in Blue”. Bernstein’s music comes from the other side of the tracks.
At the same time, the harmonic depths that he grabs from the Late Romantics like Mahler… all of the things that he brings from his music-it’s all there.
There is no “most” challenging, but certainly Bernstein is a major challenge because you want to deal with more than the blueprint. Bernstein gives you a lot of what we call ‘completely conceptualized music” in terms of harmony and arrangement. All of those things are there, but we put it into our context.
I think that is also true for (Stephen) Sondheim’s music. He wrote the lyrics to West Side Story, but as a composer, Sondheim was possibly influenced by Bernstein’s aesthetic.
If you listen to Company, what is happening to the orchestration on the paper is very important. It’s very much a part of the story that is being told with the music.
********
“We keep going to a higher diving board, and the water gets deeper each time. And, we’re getting better at making a really nice dive”
********
GOING TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TRACKS…WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM YOUR DAYS WITH PHIL WOODS, CLARK TERRY, BENNY CARTER, GERRY MULLIGAN AND FRANK WESS?
You mentioned five incredible souls that I could talk about for three hours each.
These were all supreme voices on their instruments. From one note you know if it’s Frank Wess, Clark Terry, Gerry Mulligan, Benny Carter or Phil Woods. They all had the essence of swing in their music. ****Their music swings so deeply and so intensely. All of them have the past, present and future in their music, and all at the same time.
They all had essence of the blues, the essence of the sound, of how to phrase the music, and were improvisational geniuses.
It’s like Jerome Kern said about Irving Berlin, “he’s not part of American popular music; he IS American popular music.” Benny Carter wasn’t a part of jazz, Benny Carter IS jazz. When you play with them, you are being baptized.
********
“Benny Carter wasn’t a part of jazz, Benny Carter IS jazz. When you play with them, you are being baptized”
********
DID ANY OF THEM GIVE YOU ADVICE THAT YOU KEEP THINKING ABOUT TO THIS DAY?
Certainly. When I first joined Phil Woods’ band… I was so nervous and so much younger than the other guys in the band that I was overplaying.
Phil put his arm around me his arm around me at an airport and said “just weave a carpet for me. You don’t have to be so interactive with the drums”. This let me off the hook, as I didn’t know what he wanted from me. I was so intimidated by this great giant that I was not playing as well as I could. I was trying too hard.
I need to settle back, listen, weave a carpet, tell a story and play with a bit more maturity. That helped when he said, “Just tell a story”
They all taught me that I didn’t have to fill up every corner; there’s room in the music.
They were all such great listeners, so they could all jump into the deep end of the pool over and over again, always.
Terry, Woods or Carter never did second takes. If an engineer said he’d like another take, Phil would say “Why?”. If they gave a good reason, he’d do it. But if not, he felt like he’d told the story that he wanted, even with the mistakes. He wouldn’t belabor it. The notes didn’t matter; he was going for the feeling, the truth.
All of those players always went for the truth.
We even got some of that because of the pandemic
When you live stream, and you’re live streaming for a “live audience”, but you have no audience, it’s like doing a 1950s type television show. The red light is on, the camera is on, and you might have a million people watching, and you really have to come up with it.
In a way I appreciated the discipline of it; it made me a better player. It was like making a record every time you played. It’s like a baseball game.
********
“The notes didn’t matter; (Phil Woods) was going for the feeling, the truth.
********
YOU’RE BEST KNOWN AS AN ACOUSTIC PIANO PLAYING MASTER OF THE STANDARDS. DID YOU EVER HAVE A TEMPTATION OR INKLING TO EITHER “GO OUTSIDE” OR PLUG IN?
I have made records with Conrad Herwig where I’m playing completely free form solos. I go from Shostakovich to Cecil Taylor.
All of this is in my lexicon, or at least my mind and heart are open to it.
I don’t think that there’s much keyboard playing in my catalogue, because I am satisfied with the piano. For me, it’s enough.
However, my heroes are Joe Zawinul , Rick Wakeman, Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea. When I was growing up, Zawinul was the cat for me. I love synthesizers played like they’re almost an acoustic instrument, with a real personality.
All of the great synthesizer/keyboard players, Jan Hammer and Herbie Hancock, had their own sound. Herbie Hancock on Thrust? C’mon! All of those records were in the gene pool as I was growing up. My older brother turned me on to all of that stuff.
All of that music exists within me, even if I’m playing “The Duke”
Having an openness to all kinds of languages and other conceptions doesn’t take your focus away. In fact, it gives you dimension. It causes the decisions that you make have depth.
Think about Monk. Don’t you think Monk knew about all kinds of music? He made a choice in terms of his conceptions. Just like Picasso.
********
“Having an openness to all kinds of languages and other conceptions doesn’t take your focus away. In fact, it gives you dimension. It causes the decisions that you make have depth”
********
YOU DID PLAY THE KEYBOARDS WITH STEELY DAN FOR A SESSION. WHAT WAS THAT LIKE?
Those guys were magnificent musicians. For that particular recording, they did it in a way that they don’t usually do it .
*******
“We’ve stayed together; we haven’t changed one member of The Beatles…A band makes a band”
********
We recorded the whole rhythm section together; Walter was playing bass, Donald and I were catty corner to each other. He was playing a Wurlitzer and I was playing a Fender Rhodes. (Drummer) Keith Carlock was in the middle of the room; John Harrington was playing rhythm guitar and Hugh McCracken was playing some guitar fills. We were all doing it together-it wasn’t mixed.
There was no vocal track; we were just groovin’ and playing the whole tune altogether.
It was interesting, as we were playing and playing and playing but the (recording) light wasn’t on, so I was wondering “This is fun, but what’s going on?” . Then, at one point Donald raised his hand, everyone stops. Keith starts playing on the high hat, and they went “One, two, three, four…BANG!”
The thing was, it was rock and roll, and it has to grab you right away. You’d better dance.
You know how the record fades out and you think “That’s the best part! I want to hear what happens after that”? That’s what rock and roll has to be from the very first note. I realized that that’s what they were looking for.
I realized that this was why we were jamming for half an hour.
I watched Donald listen to the tracks played back, and when his head would go up down in a sort of sideways sort of way, I realized that he was looking for two things.
They played with a click track; I don’t use click tracks. I believe Donald was looking for absolute metronomic perfection coupled with a human feeling of a relaxed way of getting to the next note.
*******
“my heroes are Joe Zawinul , Rick Wakeman, Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea… I love synthesizers played like they’re almost an acoustic instrument, with a real personality”
*******
DRUMMER NAME Mel Lewis played drums like that; it sounded like it took a week for the stick to get to the drum, but it got there right on time. Dennis Mackrel also feels that way.
Working with Steely Dan was a pleasure, and I even did a sub solo at the Jones Beach Theatre, where Donald called me up and said “You want to play “Godwhacker” tonight? They sent a car, I went out and played some rockin’ F minor blues. It was great fun and very loud! (laughs)
********
“absolute metronomic perfection coupled with a human feeling of a relaxed way of getting to the next note”
********
WHAT MUSICIAN, LIVING OR DEAD, WOULD YOU PAY $1000 TO SEE PERFORM?
Louis Armstrong. He’s the center of our entire culture; beyond jazz, beyond music. He is the central figure of American culture. To be close to that, I would not pay $1000, not $2000, but everything that I have, and then I would borrow money from you!
TELL ME THREE BOOKS THAT YOU WISH EVERYONE WOULD READ, BECAUSE THEY’VE INFLUENCED YOU SO MUCH.
That’s a terrible question-there are so many great books!
Everyone has to read Catcher in the Rye because that is American fiction.
I like reading The Bible. I kid you not. I’m not saying this because of any religiousness; I just think that it’s pretty interesting to see how much everything has been influenced by The Bible, for better or for worse. It’s all over Shakespeare, it’s all over Cole Porter, it’s all over every song. Not in a religious way, but in a cultural way.
********
“(Louis Armstrong) is the center of our entire culture; beyond jazz, beyond music. He is the central figure of American culture. To be close to that, I would not pay $1000, not $2000, but everything that I have, and then I would borrow money from you!”
********
I’m interested in the King James version, because I love the way that the words are used.
I can’t believe the profundity of the sexes within the first ten pages! We’ve hardly heard anything about a woman and Noah has already parked the ark!
So, we have Catcher in the Rye and The Bible. What else do we need? (laughs)
For the middle ground I’m reading Michael Brecker’s biography; it’s beautifully written and for fun. Another great book is American Pop Song by Alec Wilder. Also Easy to Remember by Bill Zintzer, Music is my Mistress by Duke Ellington, Music on my Mind by Willie “The Lion” Smith, and you can add Musical Stages by Richard Rogers. Those are my musical favorite books.
I also look at a lot of painters. I’m always looking at (Juaquin) Sorolla and John Singer Sargent, and things that are at the Musee’ D’orsay’
WHO IN WORLD HISTORY, LIVING OR DEAD, WOULD YOU LIKE TO SIT FOR AN EVENING AND PICK HIS OR HER BRAIN?
Louis Armstrong, again, and George Gershwin.
I’d like to pick the brain of Fred Rogers. What a kind man.
********
“everything has been influenced by The Bible… It’s all over Shakespeare, it’s all over Cole Porter, it’s all over every song”
*********
WHAT DO YOU LISTEN FOR WHEN YOU WATCH A PIANO PLAYER? DO YOU HAVE A PET PEEVE?
I don’t like it when a piano player doesn’t consider the sound that he’s making. But all the great pianists do that.
DID YOU HAVE AN EPIPHANY TO ALWAYS VEER TOWARDS A TRIO FORMAT, OR DID IT JUST END UP THAT WAY?
The trio just seems to be the correct balance of orchestration.
The drums are at the center, the American part, the “swing”…but it’s not just “any” trio, it’s Kenny and Peter! It’s the combination of Kenny and Peter together, and then what happens when it’s the three of us.
Their sound is so important; the sounds that we make on our instruments. Kenny’s drum sound; Peter’s bass sound and how it blends with the sound that I make on the piano. That makes a group sound.
********
“The trio just seems to be the correct balance of orchestration”
********
DO YOU CATCH YOURSELF TUNING INTO ONE MORE THAN THE OTHER?
I’m trying to listen to all three of us at the same time-33 1/3 all the time. (chuckles)
But you do focus over here and over there. It’s like looking at anything beautiful.
Look at her hair; look at her hands. You focus on different things at different times.
WHAT DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO SAY AT YOUR MEMORIAL SERVICE?
“He’s not dead; he’s just resting” (laughs)
I hope I loved somebody into being helped.
I hope that the mistakes that I made are forgivable.
AS TONY BENNETT ONCE SAID, “I DON’T HAVE HIT SONGS, I HAVE A HIT CATALOGUE”. BILL CHARLAP, WITH HIS TRIO, HAS CREATED A LIBRARY OF RECORDINGS THAT IS NOT ONLY SETTING THE STANDARD FOR WHAT A MODERN JAZZ TRIO IS SUPPOSED TO SOUND LIKE, BUT HE IS CARRYING THE BATON OF THE GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK AND BRINGING IT INTO THE 21ST CENTURY LIKE A WISE SUPREME COURT JUSTICE WHO BELIEVES IN THE WRITER’S ORIGINAL INTENT, BUT STILL SHOWS THAT IT CAN SOUND FRESH AND ALIVE FOR TODAY’S CITIZENS.
AS THE KING JAMES BIBLE SAYS IN ECCLESIASTES, “A THREEFOLD CHORD IS NOT QUICKLY BROKEN.” BILL CHARLAP’S LONG STANDING TRIO IS ONE THAT HAS KEPT TOGETHER ON THEIR OWN, AND IS KEEPING TOGETHER THE MUSIC THAT HAS MADE AMERICA GREAT.