Jed
Wilson
Typhoon! Imperial
Lounge, 400 SW Broadway, 224-8285
7 pm Thursdays, Feb. 17 and 24
Free
Most of us mark our 18th birthday by sneaking a Hamm's out
of Dad's fridge. Jed Wilson, on the other hand, is already
busy living the jazz life. Not the stereotypical, smoke-filled,
4 am jazz life of The Man with the Golden Arm, but
the real life of a creative, improvising musician.
After winning Downbeat magazine's award for the
best high-school jazz instrumental soloist for the past
two years, the Gladstone High School senior plays piano
man at the Typhoon Lounge every Thursday this month. He's
also preparing for entrance auditions to the two hottest
music prep schools in the country: the Manhattan School
of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music.
If it's up to Wilson, he'll take Manhattan. He visited
the city with his parents last August and found its organized
chaos suited his temperament just fine.
"I liked the sense of everything going on at once," Wilson
said during a recent set break at Typhoon. "And people were
comfortable with it."
There's a bit of the look of a young Ethan Hawke to Wilson,
a charming, apple-pie bashfulness without the actor's pretension.
In conversation, Wilson quietly jokes to deflect attention
from himself. His eyes slam shut when he grins, which is
often. He mixes polite poise with the discomfort of a boy
in his Sunday best who doesn't know what to do with his
dirty hands.
Put him behind the keys, though, and any clumsiness disappears.
As he launches into song after song--from Chopin to Tin
Pan Alley to Stevie Wonder--he plays with a sureness that
belies his relative toddler status. Wilson has already begun
to realize the goal of every jazz musician: finding an identifiable
voice.
"How do you know that song?" asks PSU associate professor
Darrell Grant as the last bars fade on Wonder's "Ngiculela
(I am Singing)," a song recorded eight years before Wilson
was born. "Huh? I love that record," answers Wilson, adding,
almost to himself, "It's beautiful."
That starry-eyed sensitivity, combined with a great talent
for putting musical thoughts into action, fits Wilson into
the growing neo-romantic club of Brad Mehldau, Keith Jarrett
and Bill Evans. Grant, an international jazz talent himself
and the man responsible for booking Wilson at Typhoon for
the month, brings up the Mehldau comparison because he sees
the same precocious, probing nature in Wilson.
"Jed's a monster," proclaims Grant.
Wilson discourages comparisons to Mehldau--but not because
of false modesty.
"He's too dense sometimes," the pianist says of Mehldau,
"like there's no restraint." It's a telling point. Even
at an age when most young prodigies tear it up with as much
technical flourish as they can muster, Wilson is unhurried.
He allows suspense-filled pauses. He lets tunes breathe.
Already, the young pianist says he has "a few hundred"
tunes in his head, learned "by ear" (he occasionally checks
sheet music "just to make sure I've got it right"). He credits
Jeff Putterman, his seventh-grade teacher, with sparking
the lifelong interest that made such erudition possible.
"Really hearing it is what made me want to play jazz,"
says Wilson. "I started studying on my own, listening to
Miles and 'Trane and just playing. Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans--that
sort of music is very close to my personality. Emotionally,
it feels very familiar to me."
Five years of lessons with Portland pianist Randy Porter
followed, pushing Wilson to the playing that made him, according
to Downbeat, the country's best young soloist. Locally,
he's also worked with bassist Dan Schulte in informal Sunday
night jam sessions at the Snake & Weasel to keep up
his group chops.
All of this comes together on stage. Tonight's first set
includes "Moonlight in Vermont," "I Fall In Love Too Easily"
and "How Long Has This Been Going On," all jazz standards
of sweet nostalgia. Wilson smiles as he pecks out the intro
to "I Fall In Love," letting us in on the joke of an 18-year-old
already overwhelmed with heartbreak. There's something odd
about one so young playing such knowing music, but Wilson
doesn't notice or doesn't care. He simply plays on, his
eyes shut as he shifts on the bench, lips pursed, face scrunched
tight. It's as if in the extra moment he hesitates--that
perfect pause--it hurts to hold back.
Though this may sound like affectation, there is no question
of sincerity when one sees and hears him play. He's genuinely
lost, in the best Chet Baker sense. There's just Jed and
the night and the music.
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Willamette Week | originally
published February 16,
2000
|
