With Renee Rosnes at Dizzy’s Club, It’s Summer in November

Most pianists these days can be safely described as triple-threat artists — they play, arrange, and compose — yet Rosnes wears all three hats better than most.

Tom Buckley
Renee Rosnes on piano at Dizzy’s Club, with saxophonist Steve Wilson, bassist Peter Washington, and drummer Carl Allen. Tom Buckley

Renee Rosnes, ‘Kinds of Love’
(Smoke Sessions Records)

It was 70 degrees in Midtown Manhattan on Saturday and New Yorkers were out in full force, carrying our coats rather than wearing them — and this barely 10 days away from Thanksgiving. Renee Rosnes and her Quartet caught the spirit of the moment at the end of her late set at Dizzy’s Club.  

Out of nowhere she floated “Summer Night,” a 1936 Harry Warren movie song originally written for the very operatic tenor James Melton in the 1936 B-musical “Sing Me a Love Song,” but which became a jazz perennial in 1963 thanks to Miles Davis’s iconic version. It was an unusual vintage standard in the middle of a set of mostly originals from her excellent new album, “Kinds of Love,” and it perfectly captured the mood of the day.

Most pianists these days can be safely described as triple-threat artists — they play, arrange, and compose — yet Ms. Rosnes wears all three hats better than most. She’s a formidable pianist, with technique and sheer chops galore; she can rearrange an existing melody and turn it into something even more special (as she frequently does for her husband Bill Charlap’s programs in the Jazz in July series at the 92Y); and her originals, unlike many, are the kind you don’t mind listening to for an entire evening.

On the album, her ensemble is saxophonist Chris Potter, bassist Christian McBride, and two percussionists, Carl Allen and Rogério Boccato; at Dizzy’s, the group was saxophonist Steve Wilson, bassist Peter Washington, and Mr. Allen. The bulk of the late set consisted of four originals, all but one from the new release. 

“Kinds of Love” led directly into “Swoop” in a way that suggested the two were an interconnected, multipart composition. “Kinds of Love” functioned as a question, with Mr. Wilson playing his soprano saxophone with a probing, inquisitive sound, and “Swoop” might be the answer, for which Mr. Wilson switched to his customary alto sax. “Swoop” is a righteous, ever ferocious, uptempo bebop number that climaxes in a trade of fours in which Mr. Wilson, Ms. Rosnes, and Mr. Washington all seemed to have ganged up on Mr. Allen, but the drummer was more than equal to the challenge.

Renee Rosnes and Steve Wilson at Dizzy’s Club. Beth Naji

At Dizzy’s, Ms. Rosnes also contrasted two of her more classically informed compositions against each other: “Evermore,” inspired by a Bach sarabande (from the German master’s English suites) and “Mirror Image,” from her 2018 album “Beloved of the Sky.” She flowed from one into the other, without a pause, in a way that made them seem a conjoined work that started very baroque but grew progressively boppish. 

Both the ensembles are considerable, yet even with these virtuosos around her — especially the two saxmen, Messrs. Potter and Wilson — the chief asset is Ms. Rosnes’s own playing. After listening to her for 30 years, I still can’t decide if she’s primarily a lyrical pianist who is also highly rhythmic, like Bill Evans, or a hard-driving bopster who is also lyrical, like McCoy Tyner. Maybe a little bit, or a lot, of both.

In either case, the late set on Saturday was the sixth out of a four-night, eight-show run and they were amazingly tight and together, not to mention well beyond thoroughly warmed up. They generated even more heat than was felt outside.

There were two other tunes by heavyweight jazz composers: a blues, Thelonious Monk’s “Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are,” and a waltz, which began the set. This latter was a lovely and wistful yet irresistibly swinging piece that, in Ms. Rosnes’s interpretation reminded me of both “Someday My Prince Will Come” (from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”) and “Alice In Wonderland” (from the Disney version). While it was playing, I kept thinking that a great title might be “Waltz in Search of a Princess.”   

It turned out to be “Everybody’s Song But My Own” by the Canadian-born, British-based trumpeter Kenny Wheeler. After listening more than once to Mr. Wheeler’s original 1988 recording, fine as it is, I must admit that I prefer Ms. Rosnes’s arrangement. Not only that: I like my own title better, too.


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