Daniel Glass Trio Demonstrates That Jazz and Rock Are Inherently More Alike Than They Are Different

Daniel Glass Trio‘BAM!’Club44 Records“Fifteen years ago, I had just moved to New York when a friend of mine said to me, ‘You have to go to this open mic show on Monday nights at Birdland,’” Daniel Glass recounted near the end of his set at the Birdland Theater club Thursday night. At that time, Jim Caruso’s Cast Party only used pianist Billy Stritch and a bassist (usually Steve Doyle) and played sans batterie. “So I walked into Birdland, I sat in on one song, and Jim said, ‘That was great! Stay up and play on the next one.’ So I played on one song after another, for the rest of the night. I came back the next week, and now it’s 15 years later.” As the drummer who has worked most consistently in the modern history of Birdland, Mr. Glass — who is also a composer, bandleader, and educator — not only plays for Cast Party, but has become the primary percussionist of choice for any act coming into the storied club. He’s played for dozens if not hundreds of artists and bands, practically serving as the house drummer of Manhattan’s West 44th Street, and has enjoyed ample opportunity to lead his own groups.During another announcement from the bandstand, Mr. Glass described the music of his trio as “eclectic,” wearing that term like a badge of honor. In truth, the ensemble, which co-stars guitarist Sean Harkness and bassist Michael O’Brien, draws from several different genres, particularly movements in both jazz and rock of the late ’60s and ’70s in which the two musics seemed to be, if not completely coming together, at least proceeding down a parallel track. Their music makes one point abundantly clear: Jazz and rock were already leaning in each other’s general direction before Miles Davis went electric and people began calling it “fusion.”The trio’s latest album, “BAM!,” includes one modern jazz classic, Cedar Walton’s “Bolivia”; one great American songbook standard frequently played by jazzmen, Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen’s “It Could Happen to You”; and one heavy metal milestone, Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” — and I can’t help but wonder whether it’s a coincidence that they picked a song by a rock band that named itself after another songbook standard.The trio’s approach shows that these musics are, as my friend Loren Schoenberg would put it, inherently more alike than they are different. It’s not difficult to imagine any of the Soul Jazz organ giants of the era, like Jimmy Smith or Big John Patton, playing any of these themes — and likewise the Grateful Dead. The Glass Trio draws on music from both sides of the aisle, as they say in Congress, and approaches all of these works on a level playing field, without any kind of inherent bias.At Birdland, they also essayed a funky number by Mr. Harkness titled “Gambled,” which serves as a sort of prequel to his ballad “And Lost,” heard on the album. The show included an arrangement of Paul Simon’s “Scarborough Fair” inspired by the contemporary piano giant Billy Childs, as well as Paul McCartney’s 1976 “Let ’Em In,” proving that the first is more than merely wistful and the second is more than just plain catchy.Halfway through the set, they were joined by another club regular, singer-songwriter-pianist Nicole Zuraitis, who may be the most prominent artist to emerge from the Birdland ecosystem; since becoming a familiar face at Cast Party and with the Birdland Big Band, she’s gone on to win the Grammy for best jazz vocal album. She started her mini set-within-a-set with “20 Seconds,” from that album, “How Love Begins,”and then, honoring the trio’s commitment to diversity, joined with Mr. Glass for a vocal duet on Pearl Bailey’s 1952 pop hit, “Takes Two to Tango.” Just as “Bolivia” doesn’t sound particularly Bolivian — its funky backbeat is more indicative of the American South than South America — “Two to Tango” is more of a Cuban rumba than a tango Argentine. Ms. Zuraitis and the trio encored with Todd Rundgren’s “Hello It’s Me,” a 1972 piece that signaled its jazziness in the original recording with a soprano saxophone solo and a brass choir. As a performing trio, Messrs. Glass, Harkness, and O’Brien have no shortage of possibilities — repertoire wise, there are a million options open to them, and there is a limitless supply of opportunities inherent in the simple act of refusing to pick a lane.

Daniel Glass Trio Demonstrates That Jazz and Rock Are Inherently More Alike Than They Are Different

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