Sunday, February 20, 1994

A jazz math formula: 88 x 4 = good music
By Peter B. King
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Let the word go forth!” says James Williams with a chuckle, using the language of the pulpit only half in jest. His subject is Phineas Newborn Jr., the late, underappreciated Memphis jazz pianist whom Williams clearly worships.

Billed as the Contemporary Piano Ensemble, Williams, Mulgrew Miller, Harold Mabern and Geoff Keezer will spread the good news about Newborn with a concert in his memory at the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild on Saturday at 8 p.m. Bassist Christian McBride and drummer Tony Reedus will perform with them.

Three of the four pianists lived in Memphis, where they befriended Newborn and saw him play many times. Williams, 42, a Memphis native, and Miller, 38, studied music at Memphis State. Mabern, 57, also hails from Memphis. Keezer, 23, absorbed Newborn’s legacy from recordings and the other group members.

Newborn died in 1989 at the age of 57, his career hampered by emotional illness and bad breaks. He had enjoyed a burst of fame when he moved to New York in 1956, but after 1960 he recorded and performed sporadically. By the time of his death, he had been relegated to a paragraph or two in the jazz history books. Williams wants to change that.

“I heard him at a club when I was about 20 years old,” Williams recalls by phone from his New York home. “I had heard his name, I had heard that there was a legendary figure from Memphis that played great piano, but I’d never heard him before. He came in that night and sat in and played some (standard) like ‘The Way You Look Tonight,’ and I had never experienced anything like that. I went out and ordered every album that I could find of his.”

Williams praises Newborn’s “ability to play slowly, to be able to voice- lead so you could hear every note with clarity, to use the pedals to be able to draw a beautiful sound from the instrument in all registers. And to use dynamics.”

On the other hand, Newborn could “flash when the time came, but it had substance to it. They always accuse jazz pianists of being sort of one-handed pianists (with weak left hands). Well he was a one-handed pianist when he would put his right hand in his pocket and play entire pieces with his left hand.” One-handed Newborn performances including “Stairway to the Stars,” “Embraceable You” and “Blues for the Left Hand” are documented on record.

Besides piano, Newborn was an accomplished performer on saxophone, trumpet, vibes and mellophone.

“Barry Harris tells the story that when he first heard him, (the Newborn family) band was on a tour, and they were up in Detroit. And they went by one of the clubs where Barry was playing with Yusef Lateef. Phineas came by and sat in and Barry remembers being impressed -- he thought he was one of the better young tenor players he had heard.”

Determined to make his celebration of Newborn a memorable bash, Williams masterminded the logistically daunting four-piano format. Pianists can rarely find one in-tune piano with good sound and action at a gig, let alone four. The concert is only possible because Yamaha is literally paying the freight -- shipping four grand pianos from city to city on the month-long tour.

“That is important,” says Miller, who lives in Easton, Pa., “because once you get accustomed to playing one particular instrument, it makes it easier. I mean horn players are always playing the same instrument. And just because we play piano, we’re forced to deal with a different instrument from night to night, from performance to performance. So this will be a real luxury.”

Granted, these are four talented pianists. But are four talented pianists too much of a good thing? Even two pianos can sound overly thick and busy if the players aren’t careful. Judging from their new album “The Key Players,” they can make it work.

“The Key Players” includes yet a fifth pianist, Donald Brown, although no more than four play at one time. Tracks include Miller’s “P.N.J.” (the initials of Phineas Newborn Jr.) and Ray Brown’s “Up There.” Newborn had improvised a lightning-fast intro on a version of “Up There” on a Howard McGhee-Teddy Edwards album called “Together Again.” The ensemble plays it in unison as a salute.

“The Key Players” also contains a version of “Moanin’,” the ensemble’s tribute to Art Blakey. Williams, Miller, Keezer and Brown all made a name for themselves at different times in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Mabern has performed with Miles Davis, J.J. Johnson and Sarah Vaughan, among others.

The piano can create many different sounds in the right hands, Williams explains, as the player varies his touch, uses the pedals or even plucks the strings. “The piano itself is an orchestra. You have the string section, the percussion section, the woodwind and the brass. It can sound like mountains, it can sound like water, you can get all kinds of musical illusions and aural illusions.

“I think the crucial element is listening,” says Miller. “I think we’ll all be intent on listening very, very deeply to what’s going on. And I think we all have enough knowledge, enough experience to know when the sound’s getting too much and when it’s not getting too much. But basically you won’t hear a wall of piano sound all the time.”

The audience probably will hear some duos and solos as well as four-piano workouts. The entire group will play written passages together and then let one pianist at a time solo with the rhythm section. But expect a little collective improvisation as well.

Williams is excited because the four-piano group is sailing into uncharted waters. Yes, Stanley Cowell formed a seven-piece Piano Choir a few years back, and Mabern performed in it. But the multi-piano format is still mighty unusual. Combine that with the uncertainties of improvisation, and you get an element of, well, danger.

“You want to be able to walk on the edge a little bit,” says Williams. “Sure, some nights it might not work as effectively as others. But that’s what we all love with a great jazz performance, is that it’s not gonna be that predictable.”

(Peter B. King is a Pittsburgh-based freelance writer.)