Robert Glasper

It goes like this: Bill Evans,Corea, Jarrett, Mehldau,Hiromi Uehara and Robert Glasper.
This guy WILL be remembered for all time. A true visionary.
In My Element is a captivating example of the rudely healthy shape of US ‘boutique’ jazz. The 27-year old pianist Robert Glasper has reached his third release already - his 2005 set Canvas was immediately critically acclaimed. The reason for the fuss is that unmistakable Glaser touch: neither enigmatically original nor faultlessly derivative but, rather, tuneful, warm and intelligent.

It’s easy to hear why the best jazz today comes in threes. Beyond the simple advantage of low overhead, the sparseness of the instrumentation allows the harder rhythms of pop to shine while still being capable of the complex sonic texture necessary to pull off the odd Radiohead cover. Mehldau popularized the jazz-guy-does-Radiohead, offering up a pensive, wistful rendition of “Exit Music (For a Film)”; Glasper does his own inspired riff on the concept on In My Element.

For Glasper, the trio enables him to heighten the drama and sense of surprise in his playing. With a bare minimum of bandmates, he has total freedom. “It’s an intimate setting,” he explains over lunch on Park Avenue South. “There aren’t too many people in the band to communicate with, and my guys [bassist Vicente Archer and drummer Damion Reid] know the direction I’m going without me having to speak it.”

In My Element showcases the degree to which Glasper has developed and refined his pop sensibility. Crossing music boundaries comes naturally to him, the way it does to many young jazz musicians these days. When Branford Marsalis began gigging with the Grateful Dead in the late eighties, purists bugged out. At the time, jazz was vying for highbrow status, for inclusion in the performing-arts institutions and academies. Now that it’s succeeded, Glasper and his contemporaries don’t have the snobs on their backs, or at least not as many of them. Kitsch remains a danger, though. Glasper escapes it because he unfailingly gets the feeling right. His music is guided by an elegant evocation of the emotion in the song—then his formidable chops muscle into the picture.

Robert Glasper

Album: In My Element (2007) Robert Glasper: Piano Vicente Archer: Bass Damion Reid: Drums

While some jazz labels invest heavily in the remix phenomenon, pumping up the beats and turbocharging the tempo to make dance music for the coffee-bar crowd (as if Billie Holiday’s music needs more impact), piano trios, jazz’s most pristine and discreet setting, have quietly taken over the music. Top practitioners like Brad Mehldau, Jason Moran, and the Bad Plus sell out midsize rock venues these days, and the next wave is arriving quickly, led by 28-year-old Texas native Robert Glasper. His third and latest album, In My Element, is the first significant jazz disc of the year; the music is direct, forceful, inventive, and accessible without pandering.

The Texan-born and gospel-raised Glasper is clearly indebted to contemporary jazz piano greats Keith Jarrett – for muscular, passionate flourishes – and Brad Mehldau, for narrative density and introspective complexity. Like Jarrett, Glasper tries his hand ably at repertoire standards, and, like Mehldau, has a habit of dashing away from melody, dangling percussive suggestions, before deftly returning to the safe ground of the lyric.

In My Element balances these themes finely, yet the most satisfying tunes are the more firmly emphatic ones. On the opener, "G And B", there is a noticeable hip-hop swing, and Glasper’s choppy playing is fast and insistent, yet not over-intense. On "FTB", a choppy percussive break-beat from his drummer, Damion Reid, sets up a funky counterpoint for a romantic piano melody.

It is left to two later tracks, "One For ‘Grew" and "Tribute" for expressions of other strands of African American culture. Voice samples from revered pianist Mulgrew Miller give the former a bebop, smoky jazz club feel and the latter - a tribute to Glasper’s greatest influence, his gospel singing mother, who has now passed on – is soaked in church inspiration, passion, love and deliverance.

In My Element is a strong, refined work in the classic jazz trio tradition. On repeated hearing, early tonal repetition clears to reveal a formidable lyrical voice.