Michel Petrucciani: A Career of Urgency The Owl & Concord Years

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

In January 1999, a week after the death of Michel Petrucciani from a pulmonary infection at the age of thirty-six [36], Mike Zwerin recorded the following anecdote in The International Herald Tribune:

“One midsummer evening in 1978, pedestrians on the narrow unpaved main street of the village of Cliousclat in the Drome region [of France] were startled when what looked like a puppet wearing Count Basie’s yachting cap leaned out of an old tinny Citroen 2 CV and exclaimed: ‘Hey, Baby!’

It was Michel Petrucciani.  At the time, they were the only words of English he knew.  But the Provencal musicians who lived in the area had spread the word about the 15-year old piano player who lived in the city of Montelimar [near Avignon] and who played Jazz like a veteran.

It’s a good thing he started early because he was not going to last all that long.”

Sadly, it was to last only twenty [20] years, but what a 20 years!

At the age of 15, Michel was to play with Kenny Clarke the legendary drummer who some years earlier had become an expatriate living in France. He also played with trumpeter Clark Terry at one of Cliousclat’s monthly jam sessions and with guitarist Joe Pass at the same venue.

In 1978, Michel met the French drummer Aldo Romano whom he would thereafter refer to as “my guardian angel.”  They formed a trio with bassist Jean-Francois Jenny-Clark and Aldo introduced Michel to OWL Records’ young producer, Jean-Jacques Pussiau.

“Two days later, we were in the studio.  Now that I am well-known, a lot of people want the credit for discovering me.  The truth is that Aldo and Jean-Jacques made way for me.

The above photograph is of Jean-Jacques Pussiau driving Michel to Roissy Charles de Gaulle Airport in 1982 is a still from Lettre`a Michel Petrucciani by Frank Cassenti.

Between 1981 and 1985, Michel would record six albums for OWL including a 1982 duo album with alto saxophonist Lee Konitz entitled Toot Suite [OWL 028]. The others include the 1981 trio album – Michel Petrucianni, a 1981 solo piano album – A Date with Time [Owl 064], two other solo albums, one in 1982 – Oracle’s Destiny [OWL 032] and another in 1984 – Note’n Notes [OWL 037], and finally a duo album with bassist Ron McClure in 1985 – Cold Blues [OWL 042]. 

In 2000, Universal Music S.A. France released a 2 CD compilation of these six [6] recordings entitled Michel Petrucciani, Days of Wine and Roses: The Owl Years, 1981-85 [548-288-2].

As one would imagine, these early recordings find a very young Michel demonstrating his prowess on the piano by overplaying, playing too many notes and doing everything in his power to announce to all and sundry in the Jazz World that a new monster player has arrived on the scene.  Like so many other young musicians, playing fast and throwing everything that one can think of into every solo is the ideal; after all, what good are all those long hours of wood shedding [practicing] if one can’t put it all out there?

While searching for every conceivable note, re-harmonization and rhythmic displacement to use in making the recognizable uniquely unrecognizable, stylistically, Michel was also looking for his own identity somewhere between those of Bill Evans, Lennie Tristano, McCoy Tyner and Keith Jarrett.

Or as Stuart Nicholson expressed it in his Jazz: The 1980s Resurgence: 

“… a compression of ideas that simultaneously impressed but ultimately detracted…. Given Petrucciani’s tendency to embellish, the result was an almost naïve desire to simultaneously please and prove himself that resulted in aural indigestion.” [p.318]

And yet, while the matter of finding his own voice or “sound” and of learning to be more selective and judicious in what he played were still to be major leaps for Michel’s development as a mature player, what was evident from the beginning was that this was a pianist who played with passion and with fire and who had the chops to back up these exciting qualities.  

There was much to be encouraged about in these early Owl recordings and a host of other Jazz critics writing at the time would have agreed with Nicholson’s assessment that 

“ These recordings revealed a startlingly self-composed musician … with his percussive touch, contrasted by Bill Evans-like chord voicings and long linear runs reminiscent of Lennie Tristano plus his sheer authority marked him as a major young musician.” [p.317] 

It was only going to be a matter of time before he brought it all together, and yet, Time was to be the great irony and tragedy in this too short-lived life.

In 1983 and 1984, Michel released on the Concord label his first albums recorded in the United States.  

The presence of a Bill Evans influence on Michel style is very discernable on the second on these recordings – The Michel Petrucciani Trio: Live at the Village Vanguard [Concord CCD-43006]. 

By the time of this album in 1983, Evans had been the dominant influence on any number of Jazz pianists over the past 20 years. Frankly, it’s almost impossible to talk about any pianist in the Jazz world of the 1960’s and 70’s who wasn’t influenced by Bill Evans to some degree.

Petrucciani was only 21 years of age at the time these recordings were made and as he commented to Leonard Feather: “Oh man, for me, Bill Evans is the salt of the earth.”

Incidentally, Michel Petrucciani only met Bill Evans on one occasion before Bill’s death in September 1980.  The two had an amiable visit during which Bill suggested that Michel’s name was too long for a Jazz musician.  Instead he suggested that Michel use the name “Mike Pee.”  Thereafter, all of Michel’s original compositions were published through his very own publishing house – “Mike Pee Music!”

On the Live at the Village Vanguard recording, considering that venue’s close association with Bill Evans throughout the latter’s illustrious career and the fact that Eliot Zigmund, who had a long stint with Bill is the drummer on the date along with Palle Danielsson on bass and that the opening tune is Nardis, a signature piece of Bill’s, is it any wonder that it was hard for Michel to get out from under the Evans influence?

Yet here again, one can hear Michel reaching out to be his own man on a blistering version of Sonny Rollins’ Oleo with its rambling solo introduction that was much in Sonny’s tradition of coming-at-it-from-all-directions introduction to tunes.  Michel’s chromatic runs and percussive riffs and his ability to play the entire piano brings out colors and textures in the music that are indications of the direction that he would ultimately take in his later improvisations.

More and more, imitation is giving way to derivation as he reaches out to bring together the elements to form his own musical identity and this is especially the case in the solo piano feature - 100 Hearts [Concord CCD-43001].

His interpretation of Charlie Haden’s Silence and Ornette Coleman’s Turnaround are a portent of things to come in terms of the singular solo piano style that he would put on display later in his career, especially on the Dreyfus Jazz solo piano recordings of the 1990s about which more later in Section 2C.

Michel learned the blues Turnaround from Charlie Hayden and he was to play it in a variety of arrangements and tempos for the remainder of his career.  In commenting to Leonard Feather about the piece he noted: “It’s hard to find a really good blues line that hasn’t been used too much.  This has a feeling of major and minor at the same time.”

In September, 1988, Michel appeared with Ben Sidran on his NPR series entitled Sidran on Record.  In 1995, Ben transcribed these interviews into book form and DaCapo Press published it as Talking Jazz: An Oral History of 43 Jazz Conversations.

Ben remarked to Michel that 

“… the playing [on 100 Hearts] has a certain dream-like quality to it.  Almost an impressionistic quality. That record started to bring a lot of notoriety to you in the United States.  Did your life change at that point?

Michel later responded: 

I have the feeling that I’m getting more and more of a personality, like my own personality.  I don’t really know how to describe it, because I mean I still have the same mind.  I still think of Bill Evans and Wes and Miles and Coltrane and all those people, and other people that I’ve played with. … But somehow, the more I listen to my music, which I don’t do very often, but when I do an album, I listen to it a lot … after it’s done, you know because I wanna criticize and like that… but I realize that I’m getting more and more to be myself. If that means anything, you know, to anybody.  But it’s getting more and more Michel’s Petrucciani’s sound and not Michel Petrucciani quote Bill Evans quote McCoy Tyner quote Keith Jarrett quote, you know, everybody in town except me, you know?

So now it’s becoming more me. … So that’s what I’m looking for in my music.  I wanna play stronger, better and sound like myself. [Pp. 227-228]

As an aside, it should also be mentioned that a chance meeting between Michel and Charles Lloyd in 1982 had such an impression on the latter that it moved him out of retirement.  As Stuart Nicholson noted: 

“Michel’s playing inspired Lloyd to make a comeback in jazz.  ‘For me,’ Michel is an avatar of the keyboard,’ he said. ‘It all comes through so lovingly clear.’ Petrucciani appeared with Lloyd on the 1982 ‘Live at Montreux’ (Electra Musician), the 1983 ‘A Night in Copenhagen,’ and on the Claude Galloud film ‘Le festival International du Jazz d’Antibes from July 1982.” [p. 318].

In 1985, Michel signed with Blue Note Records and this treatment of Michel and his music will pick up from there in this Jazzprofiles feature about one of the most unique musicians in the history of Jazz.