Michel Petrucciani: A Career of Urgency - The Blue Note Years

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

Still a few days shy of his 23rd birthday, on December 20, 1985, Michel Petrucciani along with Palle Danielsson on bass and Eliot Zigmund on drums recorded Pianism on Blue Note [CDP 7 46295 2]. With this recording, Michel achieved the distinction of being the first French-born Jazz musician offered a contract by this famed label. He would record seven albums for Blue Note during their nine-year association.

"Pianism" [which means the technique or execution of piano playing] was recorded after this group had finished a 6-week, 32-concert tour and Michel, Palle and Eliot approached the recording session as just another gig on the tour.

This superior trio outing features explorations of four of Petrucciani's tunes, "Night and Day," and "Here's That Rainy Day."

Invariably at this point in Michel’s development as a Jazz pianist, the question of the continuing influence of Bill Evans is raised and on Pianism, it does show through both in the nearly equal roles played by the instruments and in the manner in which Michel voices many of his chords.

Yet there is also ample evidence on this recording of Michel beginning to find his own way of incorporating the “Bill Evans influence” into a dramatically and forcefully evolving style of his own.

To hear a very specific example of this stylistic transition in the making, compare Michel’s scorching treatment of "Night and Day", in which he puts on a dazzling display of “pianism,” with the searching and tentative version offered by Evans of this song on the Everybody Digs Bill Evans, his second date for Riverside.

Of course, Evans was still in the process of discovering his system of voicings on his version of the Cole Porter classic whereas Michel comes to this system 30 years later with it available as a fully developed basis for harmonic substitutions while playing this tune. Nevertheless, more and more, throughout “The Blue Note Years,” one can discern the advent of Michel’s unique Jazz voice.

Another aspect of the importance of Pianism in Michel’s artistic development is that it introduced him to the role of a different kind of Producer, in this case, Mike Berniker, whom Michel had not met in-person prior to this recording.

As he explains in the insert notes that Mort Goode compiled and wrote for the recording:

“I want to give special credit to Mike. I didn’t really know what a ‘producer’ was. It’s not a clearly defined term.

When I finally met him it was interesting to see how much he helped me out and helped the band out. Really helped. Mike had critiqued my previous albums and had given me his reaction. He nailed me good, telling me I seemed to be playing too much for myself [the conceit that sometimes creeps into solo piano recordings?], giving him the impression I might be bored with playing the same things over and over again.

When we started working together he helped change something in my playing by his attitude. He’s the only one that could tell me what I had to do, the only one who said: ‘Maybe if you do it that way you can reach another step, another level.’ He was the only one able to do that.

I never could analyze my own playing. Though I know hundreds of critics, etc., no one has ever told me what to change. He did. He opened my eyes, as a producer really should.

Something magic happened on this album. There’s definitely a new step in my playing, because of his guidance and because of my playing so long and touring with the band. It’s different from all the albums that I made before. Maturity is normal, expected, if you are a creative artist – the change from day to day. But it usually isn’t this radical, this apparent.”

Michel is a two-handed pianist, that is to say, he uses both hands while improvising instead of playing an occasional chord or interval with his left-hand to form an accompaniment for horn-like figures being played in his right-hand.

He has the technical ability to carry this two-handedness even further by employing improvisations with both hands at the same time or even using both hands to play two different tunes or even two different time signatures simultaneously.

Michel has a special way of practicing that helps in achieving this skill that he described to Mort Goode in the insert notes to Pianism as follows:

“I play a song with my left hand in the original key. Let’s say it’s in ‘C.’ My right hand plays the same song a half-step higher in ‘C sharp.’ Then I improvise on ’C sharp’ and comp [accompany myself] in the original key so it sounds like a kind of study. It sounds terrible. It’s wrong but interesting, because when you change melodies it’s completely different. That teaches me to have two different brains, to keep my hand actions separate.

My technique goes where my mind would like to go. Sometimes I don’t have the mental agility to get there. That’s why I’m an instrumentalist. That tool (the piano) helps me go further than my mind might go. This practice helps me reach there."

Incidentally, Mort was to later discover that Art Tatum also practiced by playing a half-tone higher in his right hand than he was in his left hand. It is doubtful that many other Jazz pianists would have the discipline and the perseverance to practice in this manner.

Michel’s nine years with the Blue Note Label from 1985 to 1993 would find him on many new voyages of musical discovery. On these recordings, he would play in a variety of musical settings involving an array of both young and seasoned Jazz musicians, experiment with electronic instruments and synthesizers, and compose a wide array of original compositions. All of these experiments would contribute to the creation of a style of his own.

In 1986, Blue Note released Power of Three [CDP7 46427 2] that featured Wayne Shorter on soprano and tenor saxophones and Jim Hall on guitar. The recording was made from this group’s appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. Shorter appears on three of the seven tracks, but the duets between Michel and Jim Hall are what make this recording special. The idea to perform at Montreux grew out of a concert Petrucciani and Hall had done together in Paris the previous December, 1985.

On this recording, the duo pairing of Hall and Petrucciani on "Careful" and "Waltz New" both written by the former and Ellington’s "In A Sentimental Mood," also harkened back to the Bill Evans/Jim Hall Intermodulation collaboration on Verve [833 771-2].

But as Fernando Gonzales points out in the following excerpt from his insert notes, more and more, even in this context, Michel is becoming his own man:

“He… [is] a romantic with a taste for lush voicings, high-drama soloing and bouts of introspection, while steadily refining and nurturing a rhythmic vigor and flair for melodic invention and forceful bass lines that contribute in setting him apart.”

Throughout his career, Michel was constantly altering his musical settings; this was particularly true of his choice of bassists and drummers. In general, he simply enjoyed playing with as many good musicians as possible. Since his preferred group format was a piano, bass and drums trio, one way to enhance the development of his own style of Jazz piano was to play with a wide variety of bassists and drummers.

As Michel commented to Mort Goode:

“I don’t want to get too intellectual about my music. My philosophy is quite simple. For one thing – too much intellectualizing is boring. Too much comedy is boring. Too much of anything is boring. We all need to know when to get off, to simply stop.”

In step with the mantra of change and variety, Michel Plays Petrucciani released on Blue Note in 1987 [CDP 7 48679 2] finds him in the company of two rhythm sections involving Gary Peacock on bass with Roy Haynes on five tracks and Eddie Gomez with Al Foster on drums on the remaining four. Guitarist John Abercrombie becomes an additional 'voice' on two cuts with Steve Thornton adding percussion on Michel’s beautiful "Brazilian Suite."

In many ways, this is a breakthrough album for Michel in terms of the evolution of his own approach to Jazz piano for with, and perhaps because of, the concentration of original compositions and because the Evans-Jarrett-Tyner influences are hardly discernible [even with the presence of Peacock and Gomez, two of Bill Evans’ former bassists on the album].

From the enchanting, "She Did It Again," to the somber ballads "13th" and "La Champagne" to the up tempo romps "One for Us" and "Mr. K.J.," this recording is an expression of Petrucciani’s Jazz conception.

And what a conception: improvisational ideas that seem to flow limitlessly, punctuated by a forceful attack and encapsulated in a variety of constantly changing tempos and rhythmic displacements.

With Michel Plays Petrucciani, Jazz is not only Whitney Balliett’s “Sound of Surprise,” it becomes The Sound of the Never Heard Before.

The Blue Note voyages of musical discovery were to continue, albeit headed in a markedly different direction, with the 1989 release of Music [CDP 7 92563 2]. This album would introduce Michel’s involvement with electronic keyboards and synthesizer and a collaboration with Adam Holzman [synthesizer] and Robbie Kondor [synthesizer programming] that would continue on the 1991 Live [0777 7 80589 2 2] and also in 1991 with Playground [CDP 7 95480 2].

For musicians of Michel’s generation, electronic instruments and the ever-present “synths” were musical facts-of-life and something that one eventually tried one’s hand at. To his credit, his use of both never get in the way and are used to create unique musical environments and to complement what Michel is trying to achieve in expressing his music.

On these albums, Michel brings together more magnificent rhythm sections with which to ply his trade in the form of bassists Anthony Jackson or Chris Walker with drummer Lennie White; bassists Andy McKee or Eddie Gomez with drummer Victor Jones on Music; drummer Victor Jones once again does the honors on Live with bassist Steve Jones; while Playground again features bassist Anthony Jackson this time with either Omar Hakim or Aldo Romano on drums.

However, the stylistic goldmine represented in these three Blue Note recordings are the bevy of inspired and beautiful original compositions authored by Michel. These tunes will become the basic repertoire he would perform for the remainder of his career.

These originals form a block of melodies that are a joy to listen to as much as they are a wonderful platform upon which to improvise.

"Looking Up," "Memories of Paris," "My Bebop Tune," "Brazilian Suite No. 2," "Bite," "Miles Davis’ Licks," "Contradictions," "Rachid," and "Home" are all at once, intriguing, challenging and prolific compositions that reveal a fertile musical mind at work.

Other highlights from these three albums are the up-tempo burner, "Happy Birthday, Mr. K." from Music, during Michel reveals a burst of chops that would be the envy of any Jazz pianist - not a key on the piano escapes his attention – the sensitive and softly played version of Bruno Martino’s "Estate" on the Live CD and the disparately soulful solo piano introductions and solos that Michel lays down on the two versions of "Miles Davis’ Licks" that appear on Live and Playground, respectively.

Throughout, Michel’s extremely well developed sense of humor is on display in the use of unexpected resolutions, startling tempo changes, key modulations, and rhythmic displacements, all of which seems to say that 'Music is fun and I’m having the time of my life playing it.'

Michel’s last effort for Blue Note would be the 1993 issue of Promenade with Duke [0777 7 80590 28] in which he would express his appreciation to the man whose appearance on French television inspired Michel to want to play the piano at age 4.

If you are a fan of Duke Ellington’s music and enjoy solo piano, Promenade with Duke is a musical treat not to be missed. His versions of the rarely performed African Flower and One Night in a Hotel alone make this CD a treasure, not to mention his original composition, Hidden Joy, written in an Ellingtonian style.

This recording not only represents the culmination of his time with Blue Note, it also marks a point of departure for a number of aspects of Michel’s career, both personal and professional.

Although he would maintain a residence in New York, from 1993 until his death in 1999, he would make his home in his native France once again and it would be the place to which he would return from his world wanderings

Moreover, while he would continue to tour with a variety of trios, his primary recording and concert emphasis would be solo piano, both of which would be supervised by Francois Dreyfus and recorded on his Paris-based label – DreyfusJazz.

Therefore we will next focus on the return to France of one of its illustrious prodigal sons. What better place for him to conclude the remaining years of this - a Career of Urgency?