June 21, 2024
Blue Note Records announces the Aug. 16 release of And Then Again by the Bill Charlap Trio, a stellar live recording that captures one of the great working jazz groups of our time on a particularly inspired Saturday night at the Village Vanguard in New York City. Featuring pianist Bill Charlap with his longtime trio of Peter Washington on bass and Kenny Washington on drums, the album is a delightful hour of high-wire swing and stunning balladry that documents the trio’s evolution on a set of songbook favorites and pieces by major jazz composers including the energetic lead track “And Then Again” by Kenny Barron.
Showcased throughout the album are the locked-in accord and extrasensory communication shared among these three musicians. The fleet yet diamond-sharp decision-making that happens bar after bar, tune after tune. The terra firma of the repertoire set against the improvised pluck of the arranging, and the many wonderful, unforgettable moments that ensue. “This record is about the communication of the trio — what we’re doing individually, and what we’re doing as a unit,” says Charlap. “And we try to do this in our own way, without really having to think too much about doing it in our own way. That should just happen naturally, and I think it does. You train the head, you trust the heart.”
In the discography of Charlap’s group — its own micro-canon of piano-trio language and repertoire — And Then Again hits as especially open and intrepid. The set also serves to document the current state in the trio’s continuing evolution, away from an outsize book of hundreds of tunes and charts, and toward a strategy where the setlist and the performances are as natural and intuitive as they can possibly be. The interplay, spontaneity and identity are the takeaway — even as Charlap very obviously adores these tunes and their composers and has lived this music.
The band’s narrative begins back in 1997, when what would become the Bill Charlap Trio recorded All Through the Night for Criss Cross Jazz, where Peter Washington and Kenny Washington had been working as a kind of house rhythm section. “I remember looking at Kenny,” Charlap recalls. “He was playing those beautiful brushes, and Peter’s sound was lifting the band. I remember we were looking at each other and we were all kind of in slow-motion, fast-motion. It was like, ‘What’s going on here? This has chemistry.’”
Jazz world buzz and critical acclaim followed, as did regular stands at the Vanguard (documented once previously on the trio’s 2007 Blue Note album Live at the Village Vanguard). The famed club was hallowed ground that Charlap first became acquainted with as “a wild New York City kid, knocking around the Village,” he says. When the basement club’s door was ajar, he could stand in the stairwell to eavesdrop on sets by Shirley Horn, Joe Henderson and others, captivated. Years later, when it came time to headline the venue, that sense of revelation only redoubled.
“People ask, ‘What’s so special about playing the Vanguard?’” Charlap begins. There are the ghosts and the lore, of course, preserved for eternity on so many marvelous recordings that fill the record shelf in any self-respecting jazz fan’s home. “The history, that gravitas, is very poetic, but that’s not it,” he says.
“By some extraordinary phenomenon,” he continues, “those curtains, the magical shape of the room, the height of the bandstand — the sound on the stage for the artist at the Vanguard is perfect. That’s why such iconic performances happen there. It’s as simple as that.”
And Then Again is available for pre-order now on limited edition Blue Note Store exclusive color vinyl, black vinyl, CD, and digital download. The track listing is as follows:
Side A:
- And Then Again (Kenny Barron)
- All The Things You Are (Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II)
- ‘Round Midnight (Thelonious Monk)
- In Your Own Sweet Way (Dave Brubeck)
Side B:
- Darn That Dream (Jimmy Van Heusen/Eddie DeLange)
- Sometimes I’m Happy (Vincent Youmans/Irving Caesar)
- The Man I Love (George Gershwin/Ira Gershwin)
- (I Don’t Stand) A Ghost Of A Chance With You (Victor Young/Ned Washington/Bing Crosby)
