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Ahmad JamalSaturday, November 11 • 8pm"When people say Jamal influenced me a lot, they're right." — Miles Davis Program NotesIt is fair to say that Ahmad Jamal’s work has altered the concept of what a piano trio can be. With a canny use of dynamics, Jamal liberated the bass and drums from strict rhythm keeping, using the instruments instead as a composer might use an orchestra, wringing drama and contrast from every tune. Miles Davis counted Jamal as a formative influence on his famous late-’60s quintet and noted jazz critic Stanley Crouch ranks Jamal among jazz masters like Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk.
It makes sense that such a forward-thinking player began his life as a musical prodigy. Jamal was playing piano by the age of three and joined the musician’s union at 14. “Music chose me. I didn’t choose it,” Jamal told All About Jazz “When you start playing at three, you really haven’t made any choice.”
By the time he was in his 20s, the Pittsburgh native had moved to Chicago and recorded the revolutionary Chamber Music of New Jazz as well as the classic Ahmad Jamal at the Pershing: But Not for Me, which yielded the breakthrough hit “Poinciana.” An N.E.A. Jazz Master, Jamal has recorded consistently throughout his career, enjoying regular bursts of acclaim as he experimented with strings, large groups, and electric piano. On his most recent recording, After Fajr, “Jamal is just as dapper, graceful, musical, dramatic and sensitive to his surroundings as ever” (Guardian, UK).
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