Pianist Joey Calderazzo Sends Out a Forceful Cascade of Notes

Pianist Joey Calderazzo may not be a high-visibility player, but he has performed with a substantial number of marquee jazz artists over the past decade. Michael Brecker, Branford Marsalis, Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland and Pat Metheny are just a few of the associates who have valued his musical companionship.

On Friday night at the Jazz Bakery, it was easy to see why his piano work has been in such demand. Working with Eric Reevis, bass, and Jeff “Tain” Watts, drums, Calderazzo was a superbly fluid player. Capable of generating orchestral force from his thickly clustered, two-handed chording, he was equally spare and lyrical in more intimate passages.

A McCoy Tyner piece, for example, was delivered with a furious torrent of notes, executed intensely--a musical stream of consciousness that scoured the piano keyboard with repeated bursts of emotion. In dramatic contrast, his own work, “Haiku,” performed as a piano solo, had a meditative, often epigrammatic, quality that perfectly reflected its title. Other pieces brought out Calderazzo’s bebop roots, emphasizing his capacity to execute brisk, horn-like right-hand lines.

Calderazzo and Watts have had a long association, and the high voltage interaction between them was an essential element in the group’s musical perspective. At times, that interaction produced stunning results, especially when Watts’ own skills as a composer guided his choice of rhythms and accents into a unified expression with Calderazzo. At other times, however, the physical differences in decibel-producing capacity between the piano and the drums were resolved in favor of Watts, with Calderazzo’s keyboard work blurred into the background by Watts’ thundering percussion and shimmering cymbals.

Reevis’ bass--as often happens at the Jazz Bakery--often disappeared in the musical mix, as well. Fortunately, there were enough moments of audio parity, in which piano, bass and drums blended into a collective sound, to make the performance worthwhile. And Calderazzo, under almost any circumstances, is a performer who deserves to be heard.