In fashion circles, the adjective “bespoke” denotes custom-made suits and shirts and signifies the person who designs and constructs them. On The Bespoke Man’s Narrative, his brilliant Mack Avenue Records debut, pianist Aaron Diehl extrapolates this notion to matters of musical invention.
“The idea for the metaphor was that the composition and concept were specifically for these musicians,” Diehl says in a news release, referring to his working quartet of 30-ish all-stars – vibraphonist (and Mack Avenue artist) Warren Wolf, bassist David Wong and drummer Rodney Green – that interprets the five originals and five arrangements comprising the program. “There’s a sequence, an arc, a beginning, middle and end. Each piece has something to do with my musical development.”
The project gestated in April of 2011 in Indianapolis after Diehl, 26, earned first place in the rigorous Cole Porter Fellowship in Jazz Competition of the American Pianists Association. The award garnered him $50,000 in career support and an opportunity to record with Mack Avenue Records.
“I thought it would be wise to use the opportunity to document this ensemble,” Diehl states. “I decided to compose and arrange music in line with our own sound and conception, while using the strategies of bandleaders like John Lewis and Duke Ellington, who developed their music in line with the abilities of their personnel.”
Diehl is singularly positioned within his generation to apply these lessons to a contemporary context. An alumnus of Todd Stoll’s Columbus (Ohio) Youth Jazz Orchestra, which specializes in performing a broad timeline of Ellington’s music, he spent the last six months of his sophomore year at Juilliard – he was 19 at the time – helping pianist John Lewis’ widow, Mirjana, to organize her late husband’s archive of manuscripts, scores, reel-to-reel tapes and recordings. Already intimate with the stride piano canon from his teens, Diehl applied the quality time with Lewis’ Bach-to-blues oeuvre towards finding a conceptual space in which to coalesce his varied interests.
This quartet initially took shape in 2008 – then with drummer Quincy Davis – when Diehl was asked to play a concert of Lewis’ music. By an April 2010 performance of this repertoire at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Rodney Green had assumed the drum chair.
“Warren is a virtuoso,” Diehl says of his fellow Mack Avenue artist. “There couldn’t be anyone more appropriate to play the part of Milt Jackson. David is a fluid, precise player with a lot of finesse and a strong bow, who comes straight out of the bebop-based approaches of Percy Heath and Paul Chambers. Mrs. Lewis said that John would have loved him.
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Photo Credit: John Abbott
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“I hadn’t realized it, but Rodney listened a lot to Connie Kay, and told me that one reason he wanted to be part of this project was to get more inside Connie’s approach.”
In preparing this program of creative refraction of the aforementioned oeuvres, Diehl focused on nurturing an ensemble sound. “Rather than feature just my piano playing, I like to involve everybody in the process,” he says. “Sharing the wealth allows for more musical possibilities.”
For all his collective orientation, Diehl commands attention at the piano. Addressing a Fazioli F-228 grand piano, he showcases a nuanced touch, a comfort zone with tempos ranging from rubato to brisk, encyclopedic harmonic knowledge, an abiding sense of blues expression and a will – when necessary – to swing. He’s assimilated vocabulary across the timeline, finding fresh, idiomatic ways to mix-and-match ideas drawn from a diverse cohort including, among others, Lewis, Ellington, Ahmad Jamal, Marcus Roberts and Kenny Kirkland. As he puts it, “My overall goal is trying to figure out how to connect all the language to make an interesting and engaging performance, and also develop my own voice. Why limit yourself to just playing something here and something there? It’s all gold.”