Michael Gallant Trio Live Plus One With his
well-received 2013 debut Completely, keyboardist/composer Michael Gallant
emerged as a stylistically omnivorous musical force, "an artist unafraid
and bending the tradition," in the words of one critic. Gallant continues
to explore his disruptive musical proclivities on his sophomore release, Live
Plus One, due out October 9 from his Gallant Music label.
Recorded
live and almost exclusively at Levine Music in Washington, DC, where Gallant
studied piano as a teenager, Live Plus One first came together when the school
invited him to perform as part of an alumni concert series in 2014. With his
Nord Electro 3HP keyboard tucked underneath the keybed of a Steinway Model D,
Gallant delivered a sumptuously inventive set with his working trio: electric
bassist Dmitry Ishenko and drummer Rob Mitzner, a longtime friend and
once-again bandmate from Gallant's days growing up in the DC area. The ensemble
performed a kinetic program of Gallant originals, joined on five tracks by
veteran DC acoustic bassist Pepe Gonzalez (the "plus one"), whom
Gallant has considered a mentor since his teenage years.
"When I
work with this trio," says Gallant, "I want to combine the
sophistication and rigor of the pianists I love -- people like McCoy, Herbie,
Duke, and Bill Evans -- with the raw energy of the grunge rock acts that I grew
up with. Melding those influences is a big reason why I play the Nord and piano
at the same time. I love how those sounds can melt and fuse with each other,
like two sides of the same voice."
Co-produced
by Gallant and his wife and frequent musical collaborator Rachel Rossos, the
album opens with "Returned," a quietly captivating piece that
combines the lush chords of a rock anthem with the soaring harmonies of a
Romantic concerto. "Completely," the album's centerpiece, is fueled
by a powerful rock riff that embodies the "edge, rawness, and rage"
of Gallant's grunge roots "with more delicate, soaring harmonies and
melodies." "Greens" is an altered blues that develops fierce
momentum; the passionate "Sandra and Michel" was inspired by the
legendary Dominican pianist Michel Camilo and his wife; "The Real
Maria" is a piece of buoyantly grooving piano funk that pays tribute to
his influential piano teacher Maria Rodriguez. "Love You Better," a
solo stride-piano and dissonance-infused excursion recorded live at Musideum in
Toronto, is the album's closer.
Recently,
Gallant was commissioned to compose, perform (leading a quartet), produce, and
record original jazz for use in the Hollywood film About Ray, a
transgender-themed drama starring Elle Fanning, Susan Sarandon, and Naomi
Watts. Fanning plays a New York City teen transitioning from female to male;
Watts is her single mother and Sarandon, a lesbian jazz manager/grandmother.
The film is due for a 9/18 release by the Weinstein Company.
A noted
music journalist, Gallant spent almost a decade as a writer, and eventually
Senior Editor at Keyboard magazine, interviewing artists ranging from Dave
Brubeck and Billy Joel to will.i.am, Herbie Hancock, and many more. Often, his
interviews would evolve into four-hand jams at the piano.
Michael Gallant Born in Silver Spring,
Maryland in 1980, Michael Gallant attended Sidwell Friends School in
Washington, DC. The son of a musical family, he began piano lessons at age
five, but it wasn't until he began studying with Maria Rodriguez at Levine
Music that jazz became a true focus. "I had always appreciated jazz and
knew who Duke Ellington was, but she was the one who got me into improvised
music and taught me the blues," Gallant says.
He attended
Columbia University, where a spontaneously chosen class on Japanese doomsday
cults inspired him to earn an undergraduate degree in anthropology. "Being
interested in pretty much everything, music and beyond, is a big part of my
personality," Gallant says.
Gallant's
work at Keyboard began shortly after he earned his degree in 2003 and continues
to date. He resigned his full-time editorship in 2009 to run Gallant Music LLC,
a company through which he has composed theme music for the world's first iPad
interactive graphic novel, scored the award-winning indie feature drama Remedy,
and released albums by both the Michael Gallant Trio and Aurical, Gallant's
singer/songwriter project with Rossos; the latter group made its Lincoln Center
debut in 2013.
Still an
avid journalist, Gallant's writing clients include the National Endowment for
the Arts, the U.S. Department of State, and DownBeat. As a studio musician,
Gallant contributed to the album Winds of Samsara by Ricky Kej and Wouter
Kellerman, a project that won the 2015 Grammy Award for Best New Age Album.
"Jazz
is the best label for what we do, but it's only part of the picture,"
Gallant says of his trio. "There was such a great vibe in that room when
we recorded live at Levine, playing for my friends and family in my hometown.
It was wonderful to be able to capture that in a project that I'm really proud
of."
Fall 2015
Performances by Michael Gallant (more to be announced):
Thurs 9/24
(6pm), Hopewell Valley Vineyards, Pennington, NJ
(duo
performance with James Popik, g)
Tues 9/29
(8pm), Monthly Residency at Tomi Jazz, 239 E. 53rd Street, NYC
(with Dmitry
Ishenko, eb; Rob Mitzner, d)
Sat 10/10
(8pm), The Record Collector, Bordentown, NJ
(with Dmitry
Ishenko, eb; Rob Mitzner, d)
Fri 10/16
(9:30pm), Kuumbwa Jazz, Santa Cruz, CA
Fri 10/23
(8pm), The Sound Room, Oakland, CA
Fri 11/6
(8pm), Buttonwood Tree Performing Arts Center, Middletown, CT
(with Dmitry
Ishenko, eb; Rob Mitzner, d)
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