On Saturday I got a chance to check out Jeremy Pelt with the Steve Wilson Quartet at the Kennedy Center Jazz Club. The first time I heard Jeremy play was with the Louis Hayes Cannonball Legacy Band and I was extremely impressed. His sound, power and ideas were great. On top of that he is really down to earth and nice cat. I walked away from that performance a fan. His playing at the Kennedy Center solidified my appreciation for his talent and abilities.
They started with a nice Bruce Barth arrangement of “April in Paris” and Jeremy made his gold plated V1 flugelhorn sing. As nice as that was, the tune that absolutely blew me away was “Everything Happens to Me” featuring Jeremy on trumpet. He proceeded to lay down the smoothest most lyrical solo I’ve ever heard. His tone was Miles like… soft, fuzzy, fluffy and sweet. His lines reminded me of Miles with his use of space and sustained notes (bassist Michael Bowie commented that Miles must have jumped into this body during that song). It was jaw dropping but just the beginning. The next tune was “Limehouse Blues” and Jeremy went to the opposite end of spectrum. His tone was filled with energy and his phrases were complex. It was truly like night and day. On a few trumpet websites players are usually asking about equipment changes to achieve different sounds. Jeremy Pelt proved to me that if you know what you’re doing you can get the sound that you want regardless of equipment (I also have to take a moment to say that Michael Bowie is one of the most amazing bass players I have ever heard. I’ve heard a few times live and he always leaves me nodding my head and shouting out. He is a great musician).
Jeremy has a new album due out in June. You can listen to samples here. He is moving in a different direction from what he did in Close to My Heart. The thing that I like about his playing is he is interested in taking new directions even though he is fully capable of staying within “the box” and achieving success. That to me is the spirit of jazz. Roots that are soaked in the history of the music and branches reaching upward and outward in an effort to find something new.
Sunday I spent the afternoon with Lorenzo to work on some tunes. I never truly felt and embraced the role of a trumpet in a quintet or small combo until I played with him in our master class. Tunes that sound OK when I play by myself sound great when I play with Lo. While it certainly has a lot to do with his abilities it also has to do with the historical marriage of trumpet and sax (something we both talk about a lot). We worked on phrasing and blending — two things I never really worked on and the results were great. We also talked about different ways to work through and learn difficult passages of music. Good stuff.