Since stepping out of the long shadow cast by the Clayton Brothers on the late Roy Hargrove's 2008 Earfood and Kendrick Scott's Reverence the following year, pianist Gerald Clayton has been turning heads as a composer, bandleader, and soloist. Happening: Live at the Village Vanguard, is his Blue Note debut. Clayton offers originals and standards in trio and quintet settings. His sidemen for the occasion are bassist Joe Sanders and alto saxophonist Logan Richardson, both longtime collaborators; tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III, who worked with Clayton on Scott's Reverence and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire's The Heart Emerges Glistening, and drummer Marcus Gilmore, a first timer in the pianist's universe, though he'd previously worked with Smith.
The 75-minute program consists of seven tunes, all of them long. It opens with an original, "Patience Patients." Arranged for quintet, this labyrinthine exercise in post-bop offers mysterious lyric twists as the saxes lilt and lope to form a backdrop that is equal parts Eastern modalism, modern classicism, and Latin jazz. The horns take the head through modal harmonic terrain before dropping out; the rhythm section locks in Clayton's canny solo that allows for Smith's solo re-entry in a wide-open space. "A Light" offers an abstract, Spanish-flavored take on the motif before the rest of the band enters. Richardson's compelling, even bracing, alto break bridges Clayton's percussive chord voicings and angled arpeggios to introduce Smith's solo, which is offered with David S. Ware-esque physicality, lyricism, and control before the band explore alongside him. Bud Powell's "Celia" is rendered by the trio. Clayton offers a deliberative solo remark on its tonal structure to introduce a rhythm section on stun. The other members push the pianist hard and he responds with exuberant swing. The other trio tune is an emotionally resonant "Body and Soul." Opening again with a piano solo, Clayton liberally extracts fragments of the melody to erect a vulnerable but resonant intro. Sanders and Gilmore whisper under his keyboard as he injects nuance to command the harmony. "Envisionings" is a modal blues with muscular soloing from Smith and Richardson amid forceful rhythmic invention and harmonic discovery. Duke Ellington's "Take the Coltrane" closes the set with a Monk-like piano intro (you can hear traces of "You Needn't" in its cadence) before drums and bass enter double time, and the horns deliver the knotty head in staggered tandem, stretching time and swing. Everyone gets to solo in this 14-minute monolith; they lock on to Duke's orgiastic collision of harmony and rhythm, exploring its implications by rendering new statements rather than repeat the plainly stated motifs in an arresting conclusion. Happening: Live at the Village Vanguard is a splendid example of Clayton's arrival as a master possessed of enviable and original technique and a kaleidoscopic imagination.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo