Jazz Piano Innovator Ahmad Jamal Is Dead at Age 92

 

 

 

"Other musicians have changed the sound of jazz in various ways. But Ahmad Jamal actually transformed time and space.

It sounds like I’m describing Einstein or Kant. But those aren’t inappropriate comparison points for this seminal pianist, who left us earlier today at age 92. He opened up an alternative universe of sound, freer and less constrained than what we had heard before. The rules of improvised music were different after he appeared on the scene.

Just consider the state of jazz piano when Jamal released his first recordings in the mid-1950s. There were superstars at the nightclubs and each one was like a human howitzer at the keyboard. Thelonious Monk played comping chords with the subtlety of a Floyd Patterson gazelle punch. Oscar Peterson exploded on the bandstand like General Patton’s Third Army marching into town. Dave Brubeck bludgeoned you with harmonies thicker than the Manhattan phone directory.

In their hands, jazz was a powerful hard-fisted idiom. Just to survive on this scene you needed intensity and toughness. And it required special fireworks to reach the top.

But then Ahmad Jamal sat down at the piano, and just floated over the beat. Sometimes he played almost nothing. Jazz fans had never heard this way of improvising before. “On some numbers, he will virtually sit things out for a chorus,” exclaimed critic Martin Williams—who struggled to figure out why it worked. “It appears that Jamal’s real instrument is not the piano at all, but his audience.” How else could you explain his way of captivating listeners while playing so few notes.

Nobody had used space and silence so effectively before. And his control of dynamics was just as impressive. Blessed with accompanists perfectly attuned to his vision—most notably in his trio with bassist Israel Crosby and drummer Vernel Fournier—he could bring the proceedings down to a whisper without losing any sense of swing or forward propulsion. "

read more int he obit by Ted Gioia​

Jazz Piano Innovator Ahmad Jamal Is Dead at Age 92: