BRATTLEBORO — On Saturday, March 14, at 8 p.m., the Vermont Jazz Center welcomes to its stage a piano trio that focuses on the Great American Songbook.
The Bill Charlap Trio, with bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington (no relation), represents the epitome of this particular style: elegant, lush, and swinging. This trio interprets the lesser-known but equally beautiful songs that were written for musical theater and film.
Charlap and his trio pay homage to the great songs that were written when Broadway and Tin Pan Alley provided the soundtrack to popular North American culture.
“The music I'm attracted to - musical theater and film music - is a different blueprint of American music and popular music,” Charlap says. “I'm still in love with that beautiful aesthetic of those lyricists and composers of that period.”
Surely, Charlap's parents helped instill a love for this very specific music – his father, Moose Charlap, was a respected Broadway composer best known for his work with Jules Stein in the 1954 musical, Peter Pan.
Charlap's mother is Sandy Stewart, a singer known for her appearance in 1960s variety shows with the likes of Ed Sullivan and Perry Como. She's still singing, sometimes accompanied by her son, Bill. In 2013, the two recorded the album Something to Remember.
The Bill Charlap Trio has been performing for 17 years. The three members share an easy chemistry.
“The first time we played together, it was automatic, it sounded like a band right away,” Charlap says. “It's not me on top of what they're playing - it's all three of us together. I can't say enough about them both individually and together.”
Charlap's love of musical theater and film combined with his appreciation for the great melodies of bebop have led to the compilation of a great trio repertoire. In jazz terminology, the collection of arrangements played by a given band are often referred to as their “book.”
The Charlap Trio's Book covers about 150 tunes that have been refined over the years. These are not mere “head” versions of jazz standards, but detailed and creatively fashioned arrangements that frame, enhance and uplift each song's melody.
The songs chosen are primarily lesser-known gems, often from the pens of composers we are already quite familiar with such as George and Ira Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Thelonious Monk, Tadd Dameron, and Dizzy Gillespie.
“The music keeps evolving, and we always have a lot of fun,” says drummer Kenny Washington. “Bill always manages to pick tunes that I've never heard before. They're great songs, and he makes each of them believable.”