In a move certainly unrelated but similar in concept to Terri Lyne Carrington recognizing female composers in her Grammy-winning New Standards Vol. 1, pianist/composer Eric Reed takes a somewhat parallel path in acknowledging Black and Brown composers whose works should stand as standards. His title certainly evokes Eliington’s “Black, Brown, and Beige Suite.” Up until these efforts, the term ‘standard” in jazz has been most often applied to songs from Broadway shows. You know the names – Gershwin, Porter, Kern, Hammerstein, Rodgers, Hart, Berlin, and more. Reed wants to cite composers whose work originated in the jazz realm, not from other mediums. His choices are probably even more familiar to this generation of jazz and pop listeners – Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, McCoy Tyner, Wayne Shorter, Benny Golson, Horace Silver, Buddy Collette, Buster Williams, and singer-songwriters Stevie Wonder and Bill Withers. Reed and his never-intrusive trio mates, bassist Luca Alemanno and drummer Reggie Quinerly each contribute an original as well. Reed taps vocalist Calvin B. Rhone for Withers’ “Lean on Me” and David Daughtry for Wonder’s Pastime Paradise.”
Reed writes a most compelling essay in the liners about the impact of racism and bigotry in terms of classifying and compartmentalizing music. When we reflect on these words, we only need to look at what’s happened to our divisive politics in recent years – “Color exists to manifest distinction and variety. There is power in color- and White supremacists know this, so they have to use their power for evil by stigmatizing Black and Brown people.” He doesn’t mince words.
Reed’s title track opens, with an example of his gospel background, calling on a passage of scripture that alludes to “such a cloud of witnesses.” He claims that as he was playing he could envision friends, family, neighbors, his father, and musicians Art Blakey, Betty Carter, Gerald Wilson, Dexter Gordon, Harold Mabern, and Mulgrew Miller, taking sustenance for this project from their encouragement. Gospel plays into his vocal choices as well. Rhone is a minister and a mentor since Reed was a teenager. David Daughtry is a contemporary gospel, actor, and worship leader. Each of them finds deep emotional nuances in those tunes that were not evident in the pop versions.
As such, the album is spiritually centered. You won’t hear the rollicking joy in Reed’s selections. This is not only a quiet piano trio album. It’s one of the quietest jazz albums you’ll hear, period. He’s mostly focused on the ballads of these composers, sustaining single notes, and emphasizing deeply soulful chords. Consider Silver’s “Peace,” Tyner’s “Search for Peace,” Shorter’s “Infant Eyes,” and Williams’ “Christina” in this vein. Even Alemanna’s “One ‘for E” and Quinerley’s “Variation Twenty-Four” are tender enough to match the essence of the aforementioned. We do get deep blues with Ellington’s “I Got It Bad (and That’s Not Good) “played at the slowest of tempos. Only Golson’s “Along Came Betty” approaches any degree of briskness and swing except for the closing Monk’s “Ugly Beauty” in which he gives a danceable, upbeat treatment.
Reed’s music is mostly blues oriented in the solemn, sad, or sacred connotation depending on the listener’s mood or incoming expectation, but Reed is digging deeper. He’s at a spiritual level that a casual listener may not detect. It takes a few listens and some concentration but what emerges is a powerful, cohesive statement as well as the undeniable beauty of these compositions and interpretations.
