Bill Charlap will serenade casual listeners all the while blowing the minds of those fascinated by jazz music with the first single from his newest album with his trio, titled ‘The Duke’.

A piano, a double bass, and a drum kit. Sometimes, life really does need to be so simple, especially in times of unwinding. Simplicity, however, is not something particularly familiar with the Bill Charlap Trio, or at least not in this song, where complex scale patterns, chord changes, and switches in genre are scattered all across what may otherwise seem like a really chill coffee-shop jazz ambiance. The piano really takes the lead in this recording, and rightfully so. Not that the other two musicians don’t do a good job – quite on the contrary. The bass flows wonderfully through the various complex chord changes all the while paying attention to all the fun rhythmic quirks the drummer exercises in this tune. They set a wonderful foundation for what is probably one of the greatest piano recordings in the last few years. Changing so drastically is complex even for jazz’s standard, but the way Bill Charlap manages to switch from classic cool-jazz, to complex bebop, to grimy blues licks in the matter of a bar-by-bar basis is absolutely outstanding. The dynamics the band put into play here helps with the emotions at hand, sounding like a smoothly-flowing lake down a calm river. 

‘The Duke’ is a wonderful showmanship of talent and a love for music, whether through its expertise or the subtle-yet-strong switches in the way Bill Charlap switches genres, all while maintaining within the framework of jazz. That’s what jazz is, after all. More so a feeling than a sound per se, and the Bill Charlap Trio have displayed that with the most vivid colors a musician could paint.

Author: Nicholas Gaudet

Music producer and writer from Dieppe, Canada.