In the general welter of confusion, I almost failed to mention that Bill Charlap, my favorite jazz pianist, is appearing through Sunday at the Jazz Standard, my favorite New York jazz club. For details of the gig, which features the Charlap Trio and a string of guest stars, go here. (Peter Bernstein is on deck tonight, Phil Woods tomorrow.) If you need coaxing, here’s a snippet of a profile of Charlap I wrote a couple of years ago for the New York Times:
Mr. Charlap can swing ferociously hard whenever it suits him, but it is his subtly shaded, quietly inward ballad playing that seems to cut closest to the core of his musical identity. “I love really slow tempos,” he says. “Shirley Horn-type tempos. I love to move around in that kind of open musical space, and not spell everything out. Like Jimmy Rowles said,