Rare Chestnut

A preacher of the new jazz

by Mark Edmonds

Living in a world where music is compartmentalized by the people who sell it, we tend to forget that blues, gospel, R&B, hip-hop, and jazz are all branches of the same tree. That is until a guy like Cyrus Chestnut comes along. The 33-year-old pianist -- who plays Mechanics Hall next Friday -- is technically a jazz guy. But he's also one of those rare cats who's managed to transcend the genre's boundaries.

His exuberant playing style -- one that evokes the spirits of Jelly Roll Morton, Monk, and Bill Evans with its rolling tremolos and capricious flourishes -- has helped the Baltimore-born Chestnut make major career inroads in only a few short years. But his success isn't due to technical prowess alone. While a number of critics have been tripping over themselves recently in a stampede of adoration aimed at the current crop of technically proficient young lions (we look to the Redmans and McBrides as keepers of the flame in the next century), these same scribes have downplayed the fact that many of these guys play stiffly and, well, like machines.

But this is something that can't be said of Chestnut. As a child, he spent his Sundays pounding a piano in the choir at his family's Mount Calgary Baptist Church. There, he learned that music could be spiritual as well as technical. And it's this combination that's helped him gain fans from within and far outside his own genre.

Listen to any of his first five discs -- from Nut and Another Direction and through Revelation -- and you'll feel a warmth and a power that are missing from his contemporaries' work. It's at its savory best on last year's Earth Stories, where the opener, "Decisions," found him literally shoveling keyboard lines on top of runaway train-speed transitions that built in intensity like a gospel rave. Other tracks, such as the softly moody "Grandma's Blues," had a hymnal feel that swayed to a gentle backbeat.

"In total honesty, I want to do two things with my sound," he explains. "First, I want to put smiles on people's faces. But I also hope to break some of the stereotypical chains that are placed on jazz itself. It's always said that a large part of the American public really doesn't like jazz because it's hard to understand it -- as if to say people aren't smart enough to figure jazz out. I don't believe in that. If you can do something that touches the soul, people understand.

"I'm trying to create a link with the audience that allows everyone in it to embrace what I'm doing. Hopefully, when I'm finished, people will leave feeling a little bit better than when they arrived."

The church played such a large role in daily life at Chestnut's home his father hoped he'd opt for a career behind a lectern instead of a keyboard.

"It was good training," he says of his time at church. "People would come up to sing, and it was your job to accompany them. They never told you what they were going to sing or what key beforehand. You had to figure that out on your own. . . . There were some interesting modulations."

Although jazz was considered sacrilegious to some in the church, his parents encouraged him to explore after he discovered a Monk record at the local Woolworth's. Years of formal study -- first at the Peabody Institute, and later, at Boston's Berklee -- followed. After graduation, it was back to school again, this time with bandleaders Branford Marsalis, Terrance Blanchard, and Betty Carter.

In time, Chestnut went out on his own. Now, with his career in high gear, he spends a good deal of the year on the road paired with bassist Steve Kirby and drummer Alvester Garnett.

At every show, he takes pride in keeping his music accessible. "You shouldn't have to have a PhD to understand jazz," he maintains.

He illustrates that point by recalling a story. "This friend of mine had a four-year-old girl, and he was playing my Revelation disc on his stereo at home one night. Hearing that thing made her skip and dance all over the place. Now, here was a kid who didn't know anything about jazz history or pedigrees, anything. Yet she was having a ball. That's the way I think it should really be. You shouldn't have to know music to enjoy it."

The Cyrus Chestnut Trio play Mechanics Hall at 8 p.m. on January 16 as part of the Mass Jazz Festival. Reserved tickets are $19 and $22. Call 752-0888.