{"id":231,"date":"2005-11-07T01:05:00","date_gmt":"2005-11-07T09:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/?p=231"},"modified":"2005-11-07T01:05:00","modified_gmt":"2005-11-07T09:05:00","slug":"charlap_speaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2005\/11\/charlap_speaks\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlap Speaks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As articulate with words as he is at the piano, Bill Charlap gave a talk preceding his concert at the Earshot Jazz Festival in Seattle the other night. He spoke about the music that he, bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington were about to perform, songs of George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein. In conversation with <em>Seattle Times<\/em> jazz critic Paul deBarros, Charlap contrasted Gershwin with Beethoven. Beethoven was a development composer, he said, and demonstrated how Beethoven married melody and harmony as he developed beyond the opening theme of his Fifth Symphony.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153With Gershwin,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Charlap said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the melody and the harmony were not welded together, but they were cast.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He illustrated with the harmonic structure of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A Foggy Day\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and Gershwin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s chord choices. He used \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll Build a Stairway to Paradise\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to point out Gershwin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s use of the seventh interval, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153so American, so forthright.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\nAsked where the standard songs of thirty-five or forty years from now will come from, Charlap pointed out that the musical theater that produced Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, Kern and Arlen no longer exists, that Bernstein was the last of it. Stephen Sondheim\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s songs \u00e2\u20ac\u0153don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite meet our needs,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153nor do the chords of Bob Dylan and R.E.M.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\nThe trio\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s concert was splendid. I covered it for <em>Jazz Times<\/em>. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll let you know when the review is up on the JT website.<br \/>\nDeBarros mentioned Charlap\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recent duo CD with his mother, the singer Sandy Stewart, and came up with a question that turned out to be a straight line:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>DeBarros: How many pianists get to accompany their moms?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>Charlap: How many singers give birth to their accompanists?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As articulate with words as he is at the piano, Bill Charlap gave a talk preceding his concert at the Earshot Jazz Festival in Seattle the other night. He spoke about the music that he, bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington were about to perform, songs of George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein. In conversation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-231","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}