Getting Down Deep into It

By Christopher Porterfield

Jazz pianist Bill Charlap approaches a song the way a lover approaches his beloved. He wants to know its origins, its shape, its moods. He wants to view it from every angle--melody, harmony, lyrics, verse. He even wants to hear about its romantic history--what other improvisers have done with it. When he sits down to play, the result is an embrace, an act of possession. The tune rises, falls, disappears and resurfaces in new forms as Charlap ranges over the keyboard with nimble, crisply swinging lines, subtly layered textures, dense chords and spiky interjections. But no matter how imaginative or surprising his take on a song is, he invariably zeroes in on its essence. When he finds it, he says, "it's like a rose coming into bloom."

Charlap himself is coming into bloom these days, after years of paying his dues as a musician's musician. His deepest ardor is for the works of classic songwriters like Cole Porter, George Gershwin and Richard Rodgers--the so-called Great American Songbook. In the annals of composition, he maintains, "these songs represent a new blueprint for a truly American style. They will always be vital and au courant, as timeless as Beethoven." Over the past few years, with his trio mates, Peter Washington on bass and Kenny Washington (no relation) on drums, Charlap has built on that blueprint in a succession of beguiling and acclaimed CDs on the Blue Note label. Written in the Stars (2000) samples Porter, Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Harold Arlen, among others. Stardust (2003), on which the trio is augmented by such guests as Tony Bennett and guitarist Jim Hall, is all Hoagy Carmichael. The best so far, this year's Somewhere, focuses on the theater songs of Leonard Bernstein.

Charlap, 38, can claim this music as a birthright. His father, who died when he was 7, was Broadway composer Moose Charlap (Peter Pan, Kelly) and his mother is singer Sandy Stewart, who toured with Benny Goodman and co-starred on Perry Como's 1960s TV show. In his parents' Manhattan apartment, young Bill mingled with composers like Charles Strouse, who wrote the musical Bye Bye Birdie, and lyricists like Alan and Marilyn Bergman (The Way We Were) and the one he called "Uncle Yip," E.Y. Harburg (Somewhere Over the Rainbow, April in Paris).

He followed this immersion with a solid grounding in classical and jazz piano, then launched his career with the Gerry Mulligan Quartet and later with a quintet led by saxophonist Phil Woods, with whom he continues to make appearances today. "What struck me was his depth," says Woods. "A lot of young players have university credentials but have lost touch with the street. They all sound the same. Not Bill. He really gets down deep into it."

These days Charlap's career is getting down deep too. When Jazz at Lincoln Center unveiled its Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola last month, Charlap was the opening act. Lincoln Center has booked him to present a concert in February titled Great American Songwriters. He was also named to take over next year as artistic director of the well-regarded Jazz in July festival at Manhattan's 92nd Street Y.

Meantime, Charlap is planning his next songbook exploration, an all-Gershwin album with his trio plus four horn players. And he has just finished a CD for Angel Records on which he forms a duo with, yes, his mother. (It's a family affair, since it includes two songs composed by his father.) Charlap, who plays occasional cabaret gigs with his mother, credits her as a major musical influence, particularly on his phrasing: "I find myself hearing her voice in my head. After all, I've been listening to her ever since I can remember."

Hers may be the only overt influence on his work. It's hard to hear echoes of anyone else in his playing. "There are a lot of pianists in his background--Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, Bud Powell, George Shearing," says pianist Dick Hyman, a family friend and mentor. "Perhaps Bill's greatest talent is that he's been able to put all these things together and make something personal and special out of them."

This is a point of principle with Charlap, something to do with his notion of purity. "I can only do what I do," he says. "The question is, Does your music build from here [touches his heart] or is it a lot of things tacked on? Purity, for me, also means warmth, humanity, something that makes the music bigger than the artist." The music would have to be pretty big to be bigger than this artist. Happily, it is.