The evidence suggests that it was a fine debut: a review in The New York Times singled out Mr. Charlap as a particularly enlivening element in the group, adding that broad gestures, even incipient levitation, helped him milk emotions from the piano.
With Bill Charlap on piano, with Gary Smulyan, Harry Allen, Jerry Dodgion, Jeremy Pelt, Peter Washington and Kenny Washington in The Gerry Mulligan Songbook.
Mr. Charlap didnt levitate this time, but there was plenty of emotion in his solo reading of Noblesse, an impressionistic ballad from the late shift of Mulligans career. And in many ways Mr. Charlaps bandstand experience informed the entire program, part of Jazz in July, a concert series he has produced for the last five years.
The Gerry Mulligan most often celebrated in popular jazz lore was a peerless baritone saxophonist as well as an arranger given to terse polyphony. Mr. Charlap made some gestures along those lines. There was a baritone surrogate in Gary Smulyan, who has Mulligans litheness but a coarser and murkier tone. There were numbers for a pianoless quartet, the format made famous by Mulligan and Chet Baker, with Mr. Smulyan puttering alongside the trumpeter Jeremy Pelt. There were charts for a plush front line that also included Jerry Dodgion on alto saxophone and Harry Allen on tenor.
But notwithstanding a few exceptions like Festive Minor and A Ballad, both in the concerts second half all of that felt faintly dutiful, even rote. Most of the evenings more engrossing moments involved the piano, with or without horns. Mr. Charlap spun gold not only out of Noblesse but also another ballad, Curtains, which he played with his trio. Ted Rosenthal, who succeeded Mr. Charlap in Mulligans employ, did the same with Lonesome Boulevard, prefacing its melody with a gleaming rumination.
