One of the most exciting post-Keith Jarrett pianists in jazz, an accessible freethinking stylist who doggedly refuses any retro trappings.
Robert Glasper was miffed. Canvas, his new album, was released this fall by legendary jazz label Blue Note and was earning good reviews, yet it was borderline impossible to find in Houston, his hometown. "I guess the stores there just don’t go to Blue Note," he said. "You just couldn’t find a copy; I heard there might’ve been one, maybe at a Borders." Houston will have another opportunity to embrace Glasper, who now lives in New York, when he plays two sets Friday at Cézanne.
It’s hardly Fort Worth in the ’50s, when a trio of saxophonists - Ornette Coleman, Dewey Redman and Julius Hemphill - helped forge the shape of jazz to come. But Houston is making a case for itself as a source for smart new pianists.
Glasper, 27, is driven by a distinctive influence, infusing his jazz with a strong undercurrent of R&B and shades of hip-hop. His approach is similar to that of Jason Moran, a Houstonian who has relocated to Brooklyn, N.Y., and has established himself as one of the most exciting post-Keith Jarrett pianists in jazz, an accessible freethinking stylist who doggedly refuses any retro trappings.
But it didn’t start that way for Glasper.
Some of his first musical memories are Beatles-related. He remembers his mother singing Let It Be, and he played Blackbird during an elementary school talent show. Most of his early performing was in church.
"I didn’t really go out to hear hip-hop in Houston," he said.
"I played in church. But a lot of hip-hop’s sound comes from church music. Most hip-hop cats have a background in church."
He attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in 1994 and 1995, about the time he started listening to jazz. "I’d been hearing jazz, but I just never dove into it," Glasper said. He proved it by playing a Chick Corea piece
at his audition, but when asked to identify Corea ended up pointing at a photo of pianist Oscar Peterson instead.
Glasper admits to being "into sports hard-core," but his path stayed musical. He attended the New School in New York,
where he fell further under a jazzy spell. He also met several musicians who would become his regular collaborators, among them saxophonist John Ellis (who played on Glasper’s debut, last year’s Mood) and genrebending vocalist Bilal, whose inclusive form of music draws on rap, jazz and R&B, similar to Erykah Badu. Bilal appears on a pair of Canvas cuts, Chant and I Remember, while Glasper played on Bilal’s great 2001 set 1st Born Second.
Though Glasper didn’t pay a lot of attention to hip-hop early on, he nevertheless aspires to strike a fully realized fusion of jazz and hip-hop on an album he hopes to begin work on next year. A number of jazz musicians have tried it: Miles Davis, Branford Marsalis, Matthew Shipp, to name just three. But so far the most successful fusions have come from rappers tinting their sound with jazz rather than the other way around.
Ellis, a New School classmate of Glasper’s, thinks Glasper could find that inspired middle ground, comparing him to Lizz
Wright, a soulful singer who blends R&B, jazz and gospel.
"What’s happened with Lizz Wright, the sort of breakthrough she’s had, that’s certainly going to happen for Rob, too," he said. "He’s an exciting player."
Glasper’s not lacking the confidence to give it a go.
Cats make it too pretentious," Glasper said. "It seems like it’s mostly people who never listened to hip-hop in the first place. I’m going to be the first one to do it right."
-- Andrew Dansby | December 2005
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