![]() Solal said he was impressed that Monk wore a hat onstage, but obviously Monk wasn’t a serious pianist. ![]() Last night Perez was on hand to have a pre-performance chat with Solal, and naturally Perez asked Solal how he responded to Monk. Geri Allen, Randy Weston, and artistic director Danilo Perez also performed as part of this Monk-themed series. This concert was the final event of the 2010/2011 series Jazz Up Close Celebrates Thelonious Monk. Why do this? As a dumb joke? I don’t get it. To conclude a pointlessly abstract, incomplete “Begin the Beguine” (a wonderful song which must be played all the way through and fairly straight to make sense), he blasted off a left hand Hanon exercise in B major underneath a quote of the old blues “Frankie and Johnny” in C. Martial Solal is about to play a week at the Village Vanguard all New York lovers of interesting piano music should go see a set.Įven on Solal’s best days, however, the constant cutesy endings must be a problem. That almost happened when an entrancing polyrhythm began churning on “Tea for Two.” His diffuse but sincere medley of “Prelude to a Kiss” and “Caravan” was good too. A close friend assures me that sometimes he enters a phenomenal space and then all bets are off. However, he is a dedicated improvisor, so “There’s a Small Hotel,” “Cherokee,” “Corcovado,” “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” and other standards will be entirely different on another night. I’ve never really connected with Solal on record, and regrettably last night’s solo recital in the Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center left me equally unmoved. The octaves are tossed off like single notes, the right hand cascades are precise, the left hand bounds about like a well-trained poodle. )Īt 84, Martial Solal’s tremendous piano technique remains astonishingly fluid. (Anthology: The first piece is from April 2011, the competition was August and September 2012, ELEW’s piece is from October 2012, Dunlop/Ore 2014, and “Bye-Ya” and “In Orbit” were 2015.
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