Acclaimed Pianist Laszlo Gardony To Perform At Wellesley Library

Internationally acclaimed Boston-based jazz pianist and composer Laszlo Gardony, one of the most expressive and technically skilled pianists working in jazz today, presents a solo performance on Sunday, December 17, 2 p.m. at the Wellesley Free Library, Wakelin Room, 530 Washington St., Wellesley. Admission is free. For information call 781-235-1610 or visit www.wellesleyfreelibrary.org.

4 stars—“There’s a stillness at the center of [Gardony’s] music, a distinctive amalgam of central European folk strains, majestic classical piano and improvisational fearlessness. On this recording…Gardony never splinters; he only consolidates, gaining power along the way.”—Carlo Wolff, DownBea

“Laszlo Gardony is wonderfully imaginative, his music conjuring up images of busy urban thoroughfares, starry nights in the woods of New England, of hushed audiences in a concert hall, and so much more…Serious Play does in essence, in fact, and in deed, describe this lovely album down to its resonating final chord.”—Richard Kamins, StepTempest

4 stars—“…resonates with a deep and profound sense of understanding.”—Dan Bilawsky, All About Jazz

Internationally acclaimed Boston-based jazz pianist and composer Laszlo Gardony, one of the most expressive and technically skilled pianists working in jazz today, presents a solo performance on Sunday, December 17, 2 p.m. at the Wellesley Free Library, Wakelin Room, 530 Washington St., Wellesley. Admission is free. For information call 781-235-1610 or visit www.wellesleyfreelibrary.org.

“A formidable improviser who lives in the moment,” (JazzTimes), Gardony has performed in 27 countries and released a dozen albums during his distinguished decades long career. After graduating from the Bela Bartok Conservatory and the ELTE Science University in his native Hungary, Gardony earned a full scholarship to Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music in 1983 and joined the faculty there not long after graduation. His first prize performance at the 1987 Great American Jazz Piano Competition launched him into the international spotlight. Since then, Gardony has performed at major festivals and premiere jazz clubs around the world and has toured and/or recorded with jazz greats such as Dave Holland, Miroslav Vitous, Mick Goodrick, Bob Moses, Yoron Israel's High Standards, Matt Glaser's Wayfaring Strangers, and David "Fathead" Newman, as well as the Boston Pops, the Utah Symphony, and the Smithsonian Institute’s Traveling Duke Ellington Exhibit, among others. Gardony’s 2015 Sunnyside recording Life in Real Time was named one of the 10 Best Jazz Albums of 2015 by the Boston Globe. His primary vehicle for most of the 21st century has been his state of the art trio with bassist John Lockwood and drummer Yoron Israel, an ensemble first documented on the 2003 Sunnyside release Ever Before Ever After. One of the finest working trios in jazz, the group performs and records regularly, exploring Gardony’s extensive book of originals as well as the occasional standard and jazz classics by the likes of Horace Silver and Billy Strayhorn.

Gardony created most of the music for his new solo album Serious Play (Sunnyside Records) spontaneously in the studio, with a few soulful reimaginations of beloved standards added, providing a potent reminder that the longtime Berklee College of Music professor is one of jazz’s most emotionally trenchant and melodically inventive solo piano practitioners. It’s his 12th album and 9th recording for Sunnyside.

Possessing a ravishing touch and a singular style that draws on the post-bop continuum, various strains of folk music and his Central European classical training, he “went into the studio with two goals that went hand in hand,” says Gardony, who couldn’t help but carry with him an acute sense of rising anxiety in the country. “One goal was to sit down and improvise for an extended amount of time,” revisiting the compositional approach that led to Clarity, his celebrated 2013 solo piano session. “The other was to organically connect that soul-baring material to soul soothing arrangements of beloved standards.

“In the studio, I asked Paul, the sound engineer, to keep the recorder running. There was the sense that this is again the right time to let spontaneous improvisation unfold and express my feelings about our times and my responsibilities in it, thereby adding my voice to our collective conversation.”

He opens and closes Serious Play with familiar standards reimagined, what Jackie McLean called “new wine in old bottles.” He starts his journey with a sublime meditation on Hoagy Carmichael’s “Georgia on My Mind” that builds on a melody that drips with longing. He follows with the album’s longest track, a caressing exploration of Coltrane’s sublime ballad “Naima” that builds between meditation and tension with his rumbling left-hand figures driving his solo, contrasting with his peaceful statement of the melody.

As Gardony writes about recording this album, “music has a direct effect on our emotions and also on our well-being. What we need at all times – but perhaps now even more – is a clear mind, so we can assess our reality accurately, energy, so we can take positive and protective action, and of course, courage, fearlessness…With this CD my focus was on strengthening us so we can be resilient and resistant, and also on washing away any fatigue, doubt, or desperation we may feel.”

“I always have a reason I make an album,” Gardony says. “It has to be something new. When I was a kid I really appreciated progressive rock, Bartok, folk music, and of course jazz and blues. With all of those musics, people never step into the same river twice.”

At a time of hunger for reason and thirst for peace of mind, Serious Play arrives like an energizing meal, accompanied by a tall drink of pure, clean water.

What: Free solo performance by jazz pianist and composer Laszlo Gardon.

When: Sunday, December 17, 2 p.m.

Where: Wellesley Free Library, Wakelin Room, 530 Washington St.

For information call 781-235-1610 or visit www.wellesleyfreelibrary.org.

Photo by Richard Conde