Keyboard studies

Perhaps it was last month’s 50th anniversary of Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert that got me thinking about solo jazz piano. As it happens, I’d been listening recently to the incomparable Art Tatum, particularly to the unaccompanied pieces from Jewels in the Treasure Box, recorded in 1953 at the Blue Note in Chicago and released last year, and to Paul Bley’s 1972 very different solo classic Open, to Love, now being given a vinyl reissue.

Then Mike Westbrook got in touch to tell me that his four volumes of solo recordings, made in various locations between 2022 and 2024 for private circulation under the title The Piano and Me, were now — thanks to entreaties from several quarters, including this one — available to everyone via download. And, kicking off a three-night season at Cafe Oto, I heard Alexander Hawkins play a half-hour solo set that achieved marvels of modernistic sonic architecture on material that will form part of a forthcoming solo release.

All this solo piano made me wish there was a place in London today similar to Bradley’s, the piano bar that existed in Greenwich Village between 1969 and 1996. A few months after it opened, I saw two significant pianists playing solo there. The first was the bebop veteran Al Haig, whose touch and lucidity made an understated but indelible impression. The second was Dave McKenna, in whose large frame were gathered all the virtues of mainstream jazz pianism. Like Jimmy Rowles and Alan Clare, McKenna seemed to know every standard ever written, and then some. He died in 2008, aged 78. A priceless film of him was made at a private party in 1991.

I love it when a pianist, whether on a concert platform or a railway station concourse, has the time to follow a train of thought wherever it may lead. That’s what I cherish about the Westbrook recitals, which follow on from his previous solo albums: Paris (2017) and Starcross Bridge (2018). He takes the opportunity to wander, but never without purpose. In the fourth volume of the new set, recorded at Ashburton Arts Centre in Devon, he moves seamlessly from his own “View from the Drawbridge” to Monk’s “Jackie-ing” and then John Ireland’s hymn tune “Love Unknown”. In the second volume, recorded at the Pizza Express, “My Way” runs into “Falling in Love Again”, then into “Lover Man”, and then into Billy Strayhorn’s “Blood Count”.

It’s a look inside the mind of a musician who, now in his eighties, finds nourishment in Mingus, Bacharach, Rossini and the Beatles. The pace is steady, the mood reflective. There’s time to explore the melodic byways, the harmonic implications. No Tatum-style technical fireworks, yet the result is mesmerising. And, as with all the music and musicians I’ve mentioned in this piece, it’s a reminder that the piano really is one of humanity’s noblest inventions.

* You’ll find Mike Westbrook’s The Piano and Me here: https://mikewestbrook.bandcamp.com/. Art Tatum’s Jewels in the Treasure Box is on the Resonance label. Paul Bley’s Open, to Love is reissued in ECM’s Luminessence vinyl series. Alexander Hawkins’s new solo album, Song Unconditional, will be out in the spring on Intakt. The photo is a screen-grab from a fine TV documentary on Art Tatum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXJb14qufe4