Bill Charlap Trio at Music Mountain

Bill Charlap Trio
Music Mountain
Falls Village, CT
August 24, 2024

At Music Mountain, in Falls Village, CT, the Bill Charlap Trio played a memorable set to a near-capacity crowd one late August evening. The group was in fine fettle as it worked through a set list heavy on Broadway classics and standards. Charlap, who recently passed the baton after a lengthy stint as the Artistic Director of the 92nd Street Y's Jazz in July series, is one of the great proselytizers for the Great American Songbook, and he was preaching to an audience of the converted, the church pews in the historic Gordon Hall lending an almost revivalist air to the occasion.

Charlap regaled the crowd with colorful details about the songs, composers, and other interesting esoterica of this seminal era of American popular culture. Introducing the title track of a great Tommy Flanagan record, Beyond the Blue Bird, he schooled the audience on the long list of (somewhat unheralded) players from the great era of Detroit jazz (as it happens, the long-shuttered Blue Bird Inn club of the title is set to reopen). Pausing for a moment to acknowledge the recent passing of jazz great Russell Malone, Charlap reflected on the guitarist's legacy before he moved into a plangent version of Leonard Bernstein's "Some Other Time."

The Trio is among the longest-running and most successful in recent jazz history, and the sympathy of the players (even with David Wong substituting for the Trio's veteran bassist, Peter Washington) was everywhere evident in the unit's bold, crisp interpretations and arrangements. Drummer Kenny Washington was an especially valuable presence, equally adept and compelling in up-tempo, straight-ahead settings as he is with the subtlest brushwork on quiet, meditative songs and passages.

From Legrand to Bernstein to Marilyn and Alan Bergman ("What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life"), and others, Charlap's trio consistently found fresh nuance, emotion, and power from these marvelous, timeless tunes, as their exquisite dedication and connection to the material shone through. In a performance of sensitivity and immediacy, Charlap's roomy arrangements took their time, embracing the silences as they explored the hidden corners of each composition, teasing out unexpected joy, meaning and poignancy from this long-loved music. As Tony Bennett, a one-time Charlap collaborator, among many others, would likely attest, the Bill Charlap Trio is virtually without peer among mainstream contemporary jazz ensembles, and no one can bring the Great American Songbook to life more thrillingly and affectingly. Seeing the Trio live is a singular experience for the jazz fan.