Randy Ingram - The Wandering '2017

Tracks list

Pianist-composer Randy Ingram has put himself in a position to reveal more about
his musical identity by scaling down to record The Wandering, a sophisticated,
personal and enlightening duo album with bassist Drew Gress. 

While other instrumentalists can choose a different mouthpiece or effects pedal
to modulate and personalize their sound, pianists must develop their identity by
how and what they play. Ingram has established his identity through his
pianistic touch and sense of orchestration, earning many accolades over the
years. As Kevin Laskey of NYC’s Jazz Gallery says, “It’s
hard to make a piano sing. You can’t breathe into it. You can’t
slide from one note to another. The piano is a mechanical music-maker, and it
takes a real artist – an Ahmad Jamal, a Bill Evans, a Fred Hersch
– to make it come alive. Pianist Randy Ingram is one of those artists. He
has an immaculately honed touch and an unforced sense of lyricism.” 

Ingram explains, “A jazz pianist’s true identity is defined equally
by their tone and by the content of what they play: the specific shades and
colorations of their harmonies, the types of textures they favor and the way
they think about orchestrating and stating melodies – especially in the
context of ‘standard’ repertoire.” 

Ingram’s thoughts were reinforced by the opening of a new NYC venue,
Mezzrow, that featured stripped down performances, mainly by pianists and
bassists, filling a void created by the closing in the mid-1990s of the famed
Bradley’s on University Place. Mezzrow has become an incubator and stage
for pianists of all sorts to display their talents with the minimum of
dressings, typically in duos with bass. The duo format resonated with Ingram, as
one of the formative experiences in his musical development was a steady gig
while at the University of Southern California with bassist Billy Mohler. Says
Ingram, “I believe much of my stylistic identity started to form through
playing that gig my last two years of college, and my memories of it have always
made the duo format a very familiar and welcoming sound.” 

As Ingram was developing repertoire for the followup to his previous Sunnyside
release, Sky/Lift (2014), he began to feel a pull in a different direction. The
music he was writing for his quartet focused on deeper interplay between piano
and guitar, becoming more densely orchestrated and heavily structured. Ingram
found himself thinking about ways that his pianistic voice could be more clearly
and spontaneously be heard. 

For Ingram’s debut performance at Mezzrow, bassist Drew Gress was his
ideal duo partner. Universally praised as a master accompanist and soloist,
Ingram had long admired Gress’s playing, being familiar with the
bassist’s solo recordings and work with Fred Hersch. The duo’s
first gig together was exemplary: Gress’s playing was wonderfully
supportive but also motivating, pushing Ingram to explore new musical areas. At
the conclusion of the duo’s first performance, Ingram’s friend,
the saxophonist Jeremy Udden, described what he had heard as a stripped down,
truthful statement on the identity of “Randy the player–Randy the
pianist”. 

Ingram soon decided to record a duo album with Gress. They performed additional
gigs and lined up a date at Brooklyn Recording with engineer Michael Perez
Cisneros. “I knew that a duo record was not without its challenges: the
format is incredibly exposed, and there’s nowhere to hide, especially
rhythmically,” explained Ingram. “But I also knew that Drew was as
great a partner as I could find for this project. He has such a warm, nuanced
sound and is a tremendously strong soloist, which I set out to feature as much
as possible on the record. We chose to record in one session, in one room with
no headphones or isolation, and the result, I hope, is an honest representation
of who I am as a jazz pianist.” 

“I thought about how the journey to one’s true identity could be
described as wandering– a journey with no boundaries and no limits, and
that certainly doesn’t take a linear path, “ says Ingram. “In
arriving at the album’s title, I thought about the Japanese haiku poet
Basho, the importance of wandering in the creation of his art, and how the same
idea of wandering applied to my musical journey.” The Wandering is about
this journey, the process of honing and expressing one’s musical voice. 

The recording begins with Gress’s “Away,” a composition with
a lovely melody and beguiling harmonies that showcases Gress’s unique
writing. Ingram’s enchanting “Guimarães” was written for
the Portuguese city, where the pianist was inspired by the juxtaposition of old
and new, expressed here with his blend of classical harmony and voice-leading
with modern harmonic and rhythmic ideas. 

The spirited “Large Father” is Ingram’s tribute to Boston Red
Sox legend David Ortiz in his last season; it takes a page out of Ornette
Coleman’s book on creating freedom without losing melodicism. Jimmy
Rowles’s “The Peacocks” is a favorite ballad of
Ingram’s, who delivers a wonderfully moody and evocative interpretation. 

Ingram’s version of Cole Porter’s “Dream Dancing” is
deceptive: it retains the brilliant lyricism of the melody but has been
extensively reharmonized. The album’s title track, “The
Wandering,” is a tribute to British piano great John Taylor, a player who
developed his own language with an astounding melodic sense, crystal-clear touch
and multifaceted harmonies, which Ingram represents with aplomb. 

Wayne Shorter is one of Ingram’s composing heroes and the
saxophonist’s “Chief Crazy Horse,” with its insistent bass
line, became the soundtrack of Ingram’s half-marathon training program.
It provides a rhythmic juxtaposition to the duo’s repertoire. Ingram
shows his lifelong appreciation for pianist Bill Evans through his up-tempo
rendition of Evans’ “Show-Type Tune,” a favorite of
Ingram’s for its harmonic genius. The recording concludes with Kenny
Wheeler’s “Three For D’reen,” a rhapsodic piece that
is delicately balanced between ballad and jazz waltz under Ingram and
Gress’s impressive hands. 

Wherever your path takes you, Sunnyside hopes that it leads you to as enchanting
a place as does Randy Ingram and Drew Gress’s music on The Wandering, a
lovingly conceived and performed program that achieves new heights of ingenuity
through musical collaboration. 

Randy Ingram - piano 
Drew Gress - bass

Tracklist:
01. Randy Ingram - Away (6:14)
02. Randy Ingram - Guimarâes (7:20)
03. Randy Ingram - Large Father (4:10)
04. Randy Ingram - The Peacocks (8:49)
05. Randy Ingram - Dream Dancing (7:17)
06. Randy Ingram - The Wandering (7:24)
07. Randy Ingram - Chief Crazy Horse (6:08)
08. Randy Ingram - Show-Type Tune (5:56)
09. Randy Ingram - Three For Dreen (8:16)

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