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Hal Galper Trio: Trip the Light Fantastic

By Dan McClenaghan
November 24, 2011
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Hal Galper Trio: Trip the Light Fantastic

About eighty percent of the jazz piano players out there can fit into one of two schools: that of the introspective, harmonically rich

Bill Evans

piano
1929 - 1980

" data-original-title="" title="">Bill Evans mode; or the more percussive and gregarious

Bud Powell

piano
1924 - 1966

" data-original-title="" title="">Bud Powell bebop approach. There's also a small slice of the that pie that draws it primary inspiration from bright and splashy

Art Tatum

piano
1909 - 1956

" data-original-title="" title="">Art Tatum/

" data-original-title="" title="">Oscar Peterson pre-bop playing style, along with various subsets. Then there are those who take a foundation of one of those approaches and craft something quite unique, the path that Hal Galper has taken over the past decade.

A veteran of the groups of trumpeter

Chet Baker

trumpet and vocals
1929 - 1988

" data-original-title="" title="">Chet Baker and alto saxophonist

Phil Woods

saxophone, alto
1931 - 2015

" data-original-title="" title="">Phil Woods, Galper can certainly claim a bebop foundation. But he has taken that foundation and flown free with it, as documented in his recent Origin CDs— Furious Rubato (2007) and E Pluribus Unum (2010)—where he explored the rubato style of playing, an approach that lends elasticity to time and tempo, and often engenders wildness and abandon.

Galper opens the set with Sammy Fain/Bob Hilliard's "Alice in Wonderland," a tune famously covered by Evans on his masterpiece Sunday at the Village Vanguard (Riverside Records, 1961). This is not a floating Evans version, however; Galper and band mates—drummer

John Bishop

drums
b.1959

" data-original-title="" title="">John Bishop and bassist

Jeff Johnson

bass
b.1954

" data-original-title="" title="">Jeff Johnson—take the tune on a furiously tumultuous ride, full of urgency, pushing in the direction of flying out of control, without ever doing so.

Jule Styne's standard "Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry" is more restrained, a deeply ruminative and intimate conversation between Galper and Johnson that leads into the ominous Galper original, "Suspension," which puts the trio's edgy interactivity and ability to sustain a prickly momentum on full display. The title tune, another Galper original, has a swaying, fractured grandeur, an off-center, freewheeling beauty full of mystery and intrigue.

The trio wraps it up with "Be My Love," a film tune written for vocalist Mario Lanza. Bishop's drums sizzle and detonate unpredictably; Johnson's bass rumbles; and the piano notes careen with a scintillating, headlong freedom, closing out Galper's finest trio outing to date.

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Track Listing

Alice in Wonderland; Babes of Cancun; Get Up & Go; Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry; Suspension; Trip the Light Fantastic; Be My Love.

Personnel

Hal Galper

piano

John Bishop

drums

Jeff Johnson

bass

Album information

Title: Trip the Light Fantastic | Year Released: 2011 | Record Label: Origin Records

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