Somewhat unique among music genres, jazz is a lifetime vocation, with legends performing well into their eighties and sometimes beyond. Taking this long view, pianist Noah Haidu, 51, is, in jazz terms, likely not yet at the midpoint of an already distinguished career.
Haidu, a native of Charlottesville, Virginia, with a Master of Music degree from the State University of New York, issued his first album, Slipstream, in 2011. Ten years later he released Slowly: Song For Keith Jarrett, the first of three trio albums that would set Haidu on his present path as one of contemporary jazz’s foremost improvisers on the Great American Songbook.
Like Jarrett, whose Standards Trio, launched in the 1980s with drummer Jack DeJohnette and bassist Gary Peacock, set a new framework for improvisation in popular-music forms, Haidu has embraced the minimalist approach of the trio, after several albums with six to eight players. On April 28, he’ll make his Arts Garage debut to promote Standards II, released last week. He’s bringing on two of the jazz world’s ageless titans and regular collaborators: Buster Williams, a bassist whose sprawling resume includes stints with Herbie Hancock, Dexter Gordon and Bobby Hutcherson; and drummer Lenny White, a jazz-fusion innovator and member of Chick Corea’s Return to Forever.
Ahead of his Delray Beach appearance, Haidu spoke to Boca magazine about his love for Keith Jarrett, his approach to standards, working with his extraordinary sidemen and more.
This concert is being billed as “Celebrating Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio.” Jazz musicians had interpreted standards long before Keith launched his project in the ‘80s; why was Keith’s approach such an important and influential concept for you and so many in the jazz world?
The person that introduced me to jazz was my father, and Keith was someone he really admired. I found my way to jazz gradually, and fell in love with it, but wasn’t under the spell of Keith Jarrett. My dad would play it for me, and I just wasn’t that interested. After some years, my dad moved to Brooklyn, retired, and he got tickets to hear Keith at Carnegie Hall. At that point, it really grabbed me, and I did fall in love with his music. We actually caught his final trio performance. And my dad gave me tickets to what would turn out to be Keith’s final concert. My dad was extremely ill. It had become a tradition; we would always go hear Keith at Carnegie Hall every year. So my dad suddenly got very ill, and said, “here are these tickets, I’m not going to be able to make the show.” He actually passed away a few days before the show.
So I went as a way of memorializing my dad. It turned out to be Keith’s final concert, because he had a stroke a few weeks after. So it has become this personal connection, and it was a difficult time in my life. Keith’s music helped me get through it. And then when I was going into the studio and recording for the first time with Buster Williams and Billy Hart, Keith finally announced his retirement from music, just as we were going into the studio. We did that whole album as a tribute to Keith, and that launched my trio, as far as touring.
What is it about the tunes and that period of American music that so lends itself to the improvisations and extensions of jazz?
I think once you really internalize the music, you can do more with it than on a piece that you recently wrote, or someone’s music you’re learning for a particular concert. It is a common language that musicians share, and it’s a way for us to meet in the middle and start a journey together and go in a new direction. That has been an approach that we’ve taken with these tours with Buster and Lenny.
I think the music is beautiful. There’s a simplicity to it. I love the melodies. The song structures have this internal logic that just works beautifully.
On this tour, do you take on some of the same compositions that Jarrett’s trio played, or do you perform different standards?
There’s overlap between the ones I’ve recorded and the ones Keith has done. I’m not trying to remake any of his records or redo any of his concerts, but we do some things he’s done before. We’ve gotten requests to do “God Bless the Child,” which we’ve done a couple of times on the tour. “Someone to Watch Over Me” is one he’s recorded, and “Someday My Prince Will Come.” There is overlap, but it’s not an exact replica. We approach it like we do it.
Did the composers of these works have in mind this kind of experimentation with their songs?
I don’t think so. However, I think they were very gifted musicians, and they may have been improvisers themselves. I’m not an expert on Gershwin or Cole Porter. But they were certainly brilliant minds. The thing about jazz—this has never happened before. There’s no other art form like it. It’s drawing out from these old Broadway and popular tunes, and then become this language for advanced improvisation. That’s never really happened in the history of music, as far as I know, so I can’t imagine they would have envisioned Miles Davis coming along and covering one of their tunes, or Keith Jarrett.
Do you feel the American Songbook should be extended to music from the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s and onward? Could you have the same adventurous spirit playing the Beatles or the Beach Boys or Radiohead, or is there something uniquely suited to the period in which you specialize?
I’m not crazy about the labels, personally. I think that those artists you mentioned, a lot of that is very much worthy of being covered and interpreted by jazz musicians. As far as what’s a standard and what’s not a standard, I’m not sure it matters as much. But the simple answer is yes.
Lenny White and Buster Williams have a generation or two on you, agewise. Have you taken anything away from performing with them; and conversely, do you think they pick anything up from a relatively younger musician such as yourself?
I take something from them every show, every song. I just walk in with open ears and see where it takes me. To be able to have an exchange like that is like talking to somebody who’s got a very advanced vocabulary: You’re going to learn new words. As far as them, for me, I wouldn’t really speculate, but I know one time, we were trying different versions of things, and Buster said, “I’ve never played that song that way before.” And those guys are always listening to everything. That’s the expectation; we’re all listening to everything and everybody all the time. So I think we’re all absorbing.
Do they do something onstage every night that surprises you?
Every song.
Not everyone in the audience may pick up on that, necessarily, but it’s got to keep it exciting and fresh every night for you.
For sure. I think the art form of it is to present it in a cohesive performance, and of course to live on the edge, where something might actually take a left turn and not do what we expected—or be a mistake. Just having that as a possibility is just one of the things that makes it great.
Ultimately, is there a limit to how much you can be influenced by a master like Jarrett; at some point do you have to forget what he did so you can take your own directions?
I think so. I have noticed there’s a certain point where I’ll fall in love with an artist, and then there’s a point where I move on and I might go back to it after a few years. Yeah, I’m always learning from these artists, but I always use it in service of my style.
How different are your compositions of original music from the Standards material?
It’s very different. I think that was a big motivator to me doing standards, because I was writing music, since I had started recording, that was becoming increasingly complicated. I really loved composing, and I felt great about the music, and the albums we did. But at a certain point, I developed this yearning to play simple melodies, and play something straight from the heart.
Noah Haidu, Buster Williams and Lenny White perform at 7 p.m. April 28 at Arts Garage, 94 N.E. Second Ave., Delray Beach. Tickets run $40-$45. Call 561/450-6357, artsgarage.org.
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