Adam Kromelow is a sensational young jazz pianist who will be coming to
Buffalo with fellow pianist Angelo DiLoreto at 7:30 p.m. March 7 to do
two-piano improvisations on the music of Genesis at Denton, Cottier &
Daniels in Amherst.
A young pianist presenting a new trio
could hardly have better bloodlines than Kromelow. His first trio disc was
produced by Arturo O’Farrill and at the Manhattan School of Music, he studied
under Jason Moran and Vijay Iyer. And if that isn’t credential enough, Brad
Mehldau has had Kromelow play for his Carnegie Hall jazz piano master class.
What is typical of twentysomething
Kromelow’s jazz generation is his bristling at anyone attempting to define or
confine him by orthodox jazz pieties. His young trio, he says (with bassist
Raviv Markovitz and drummer Jason Burger), doesn’t see itself as a jazz trio.
“We also share an equal admiration for many other genres. Personally, I have a
very special place in my heart for classical music and rock music.”
When you hear Kromelow’s gorgeous version
of the Beatles’ “Across the Universe,” you’ll understand what he means when he
says “there is a noticeable thinning of the lines between contemporary jazz,
classical and rock genres and in this band we really don’t see these lines at
all.”
Which doesn’t mean that as a more
conventional jazz trio playing “free, collective improvisation” on the likes of
Thelonious Monk’s “Brilliant Corners” and Kromelow’s own new composition “Black
Mamba,” they aren’t already as exciting in their way as some of the best of
Kromelow’s masters Moran and Iyer. “Brilliant Corners” is atomized in
“whichever of” the song’s themes “we are in the mood to tamper with” until the
final “original melody as Monk conceived it.”
A preview of the Denton concert is the
trio’s version of Peter Gabriel’s “Mercy Street.”
A brilliant young musician with the right
trio mates to introduce him.
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