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The Bill Charlap Trio comes to the Williams Center for the Arts 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 7 as the last performers in this school year’s Jazz Masters Series.
Tickets are free for students, $4 for faculty and staff, and $18 for the public. They can be obtained by calling the Williams Center box office at (610) 330-5009.
Bill Charlap specializes in settings of the “great American songbook,” and is especially partial to the music of Richard Rodgers, Harold Arlen, Kander and Ebb, and Johnny Mercer. Bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington have been a part of his trio for nearly 10 years.
Charlap will also give a talk about his career in jazz prior to the performance at 7 p.m. in room 123 of the Williams Center.
Charlap was born into one of New York’s most musical families. His father, Moose, was a Broadway composer and songwriter whose credits include the scores to Peter Pan, The Conquering Hero, and Alice Through The Looking Glass, among others. His mother, the popular singer Sandy Stewart, has sung with Benny Goodman and Perry Como and garnered a Grammy nomination for her hit record My Coloring Book. Charlap began to play the piano at an early age and formally studied under jazz pianist Jack Reilly and classical pianist Eleanor Hancock.
Charlap regards his new album, Bill Charlap Plays George Gershwin: The American Soul, as a follow-up to his much acclaimed 2004 release, Somewhere: The Songs Of Leonard Bernstein.
It was partly the challenge of finding fresh ways to interpret some of Gershwin’s best-loved songs, including “A Foggy Day,” “’S Wonderful,” “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” “Nice Work if You Can Get It,” “Somebody Loves Me,” and “How Long Has This Been Going On?,” that led Charlap to make this his first album to employ a larger ensemble, adding a frontline horn section to his long-standing trio.
The Feb. 17 New York Times says of his latest work, “The music ‘leapt out of his fingers in extended, hurtling, Art Tatum-worthy runs wound around rhythmic pirouettes, all executed with a feathery touchan explosion of pianistic fireworks in which every note and chord vibrated with a gleaming ferocity.’”
The 2006-2007 Performance Series at Lafayette is supported in part by gifts from Friends of the Williams Center for the Arts; by provisions of the Josephine Chidsey Williams Endowment, Alan and Wendy Pesky Artist-in-Residence Program, James Bradley Fund, and Ed Brunswick Jazz Fund; and by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, and Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour; the F.M. Kirby Foundation, Dexter and Dorothy Baker Foundation, and New England Foundation for the Arts.