The Herbst Theatre fills up just before seven with almost all of the seats taken, and the band – James Cammack on bass and James Johnson, a Lincoln Center drummer, filling in for Idris Mohammad – takes the stage pick up their instruments, the members of the trio nodding to each other, and Ahmad Jamal is off on a lingering robatto introduction to the first song, a new ballad, full of trickling descents and ascents of chromatic staircases and steep climbs and falls up and down diminished shoots, only the crashing breaks bringing the band together out of the ever-changing tempos. His matchless sound blends minimalist melodies, recurring thematic sections, funky rhythms, sections of crashing bass chord pedals, and sections of blowing swing, in a hypnotic, serious, and emotional with a touch that is at once raw and refined, constantly building off of contrast between repetition and melodic flight, between tension and release, between quiet and loud. I’ve always been astounded by how he lifts one finger into the air at the end of a particularly crashing interlude, and on the next bar, the band drops down in volume and seamlessly changes into the next section; having heard Jamal play over the past seven or eight years, I am always stunned by the amount of new material he is always playing and by the way that his sound, after a half century of growth, continues to form and develop.

"I write the music and to me, the music dictates the title. The dynamics are important. The research is important. The melodic line of the song is important. Everything is important with music. It is always a challenge. Music is a constant challenge. You are not ever finished. People ask me what my favorite record is and I say that it is the next one. That is about the size of it."

One of the pieces that particularly stood out to me was “Autumn Rain,” an explosive new composition with a Latin rhythm, and “Papillon,” French for butterfly. The last song of the long set before three encores is, “[his] most famous song thanks to you all and Clint Eastwood’s favorite song, as he stated, “Poinciana,” the song that everyone is waiting to hear. Jamal originally released his version of the composition in 1958, only some months after the original was released on his preeminent albums, But Not for Me, and Live at the Perishing and the Spotlight Club, and released it again in 1963 as the title track of his release, Poinciana. The piece, a humid bossa-nova composed by Buddy Bernier and sang by Frank Sinatra, has a ethereal, hymn-like sound to its minimalist melody that floats delicately over the bass pedal. Jamal’s version rose to the top of the charts in 1958 and stayed there for 108 weeks.

An eruption of applause accompanies the first few bars of the familiar bossa á la Jamal. Jamal’s arrangement works with this contrast, as he plays single notes with bars of silence between, that trickle over a funky bass vamp, building in intensity and volume ever so slowly between sections of crashing bass pedals on a single chord on the piano loud and tense before the next release. And forty-four years later, Jamal’s take on the tune has continued to grow, preserving these magical elements and building on new melodic and rhythmic variations.

Ahmad Jamal’s Story

Ahmad Jamal was born in Pittsburgh, “one of the most remarkable places in the world for musicians and people of the arts,” as he states on his website, and home, as he also states, of a number of "Pittsburgher” jazz musicians including George Benson, Roy Eldridge, Art Blakey, Errol Garner, Kenny Clarke, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Billy Eckstein, Gene Kelly, Stanley Turrentine, Mary Loe Williams, Dakota Staton, and Billy Strayhorn. He started playing piano when he was three and his “wonderful Uncle Lawrence” called him over to the piano and asked him to replicate what he was playing, similar to the Suzuki method that is popular for teaching young children in Japan. At seven, while delivering newspapers to Strayhorn’s parents’ house, who he would meet years later since he had already left town, he began his first formal piano lessons with Mary Cardwell Dawson, and later studied with James Miller when Dawson moved.

He first began touring with the George Hudson Orchestra and later played with The Four Strings in Chicago, which featured violinist Joe Kennedy Jr., a lifelong friend of Jamal’s who had also studied with Mary Cardwell Dawson.

In 1951 Jamal’s first recording, Ahmad’s Blues, was released, later to be heard in the stage production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In 1958 Jamal released his most famous recording, as mentioned, But Not for Me: Live at the Perishing, featuring “Poinciana,” performed with bassist Israel Crosby and drummer Vernell Fourmier. Since Ahmad’s Blues in 1951, he has released over seventy albums; some of my favorites include Alhambra,1961, which features inimitable arrangements of standards such as “Autumn Leaves,” “Love for Sale,” and “Isn’t It Romantic?”; Night Song, 1980, featuring Oakland-based guitarist Calvin Keys, who you can hear on Life Force Jazz, local multi-reedist and composer Dawan Muhammad’s San Jose-based record label; and After Fajr, Á Baalbeck, In Search Of (Jamal) his most recent releases.

Quotes from Ahmad Jamal’s “Favorite Experiences” Page

“On the list of favorite experiences is my first Carnegie Hall appearance. The featured artists were the Duke Ellington Orchestra (the event was the celebration of Duke's 25th Anniversary Concert), Charlie Parker with Strings, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz and The Ahmad Jamal Trio. This was 1951 and my mother's last opportunity to attend a performance of mine before her passing.”

“Performing on the Music Cruise on the SS Rotterdam in 1975 would have to be on my list of special events. The cruise featured Woody Herman, Sarah Vaughn, Wild Bill Davis, Joe Williams, Stan Getz, The Ahmad Jamal Trio and others. This was a cruise that I really hadn't wanted to make. On the return to New York, we were advised by the ship's staff of an approaching storm. This storm turned out to be of major proportions. Most of us became seasick and the ship's motion required the piano to be bolted to the floor. We barely got through the set - we were in the area of the Bermuda Triangle.”

Check out www.ahmadjamal.net

Listen to and watch Ahmad Jamal’s “Darn that Dream” in 1958 on Youtube!

Listen to and watch Ahmad Jamal’s “Poinciana” in 2005 on Youtube!