New Friday Anniversary Thoughts— PART III of Communing in Performed Sound at St. Stephen’s
Jazz Concert with Sullivan Fortner, February 2019
For St. Stephen’s 2018-19 concert series entitled The Future of Jazz Piano, its curator Fred Hersch introduced three young jazz pianists who, he said, were “particularly strong.”
The Future of Jazz Piano, 2018-19, e-poster. Top to bottom: Glenn Zaleski, Sullivan Fortner, and Micah Thomas
Like Fred, they were all highly individual improvisers who produced music with an acute sensitivity to space, mood and us, their audience.
Those who attended the series (including me) noticed. Pianist-critic Margaret Darby’s review for Philly Life & Culture of the first concert by Glenn Zaleski applauded ideas flowing from close listening to the sounds created in a space filled with people. She also felt the setting illuminated the sacred in Glenn’s “thrilling” exploration of the harmonic kinship between Chopin and jazz. In this “beautiful sanctuary,” she wrote, such a “deep and reverent tribute to jazz . . . cannot help but feel worshipful.”
The second pianist, New Orleans-born Sullivan Fortner, drew us into his music and one another. For him, jazz is social, interactive, which he amply demonstrated.
Sullivan at St. Stephen’s
He chatted with us informally, as in a jazz club, yet we warmed especially to his words to a boy in front who scrutinized his playing. At some interlude, I believe Sullivan invited the youth to the piano. I know for sure that as we left, Glenn Zaleski who attended that night, complimented Sullivan for engaging with the boy, noting how much each of them had gained from such generosity early on. In the moment shared by a Black adult and an Asian youth, we also experienced jazz’s social diversity within St. Stephen’s. The levels of communion were striking—and inspiring.
Both performers admired the last and youngest among them, Micah Thomas, then a Juilliard student, whom (as Fred noted) jazz pianist Aaron Park called “scary good.” His technical command, musicality, and presence in the moment that shaped his improvisations to the space and those gathered there, were riveting. Many listeners spoke of being unusually affected, taken deep within themselves. Me too. Yet Micah’s music also bonded us, moving listeners to share thoughts with those around them, familiar or not, during and after. That too is communion.
For Micah’s distinctive sound, here’s his recent interpretation of a jazz standard, “Over the Rainbow”, that, though startlingly different, for me conveys qualities that I now listen for in jazz piano. Despite melodic twists, textures and pyrotechnics, the whole of Micah’s “Rainbow” sweeps us forward AND, as in the Wizard of Oz, delivers us ‘home” with a bang, more clearsighted, connected, and invigorated (if breathless). At least that’s the story this version told me, using Fred’s vision of jazz piano as storytelling (Part II). If improvising alone in a recording studio produced this transcendent “tornado,” I wonder what might emerge today, with us within St. Stephen’s special space?
— Suzanne Glover Lindsay, St. Stephen’s historian and curator