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Artist: Bill Charlap Trio
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Bill Charlap Trio:

Uptown, Downtown

Grammy Award winning pianist Bill Charlap and his longtime trio partners bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington get back to the highest standards with an album of quintessential compositions. Uptown Downtown is due out on Impulse!/Verve on September 8 and WBGO announced the news today, calling the trio "a fixture of the New York jazz firmament." 

Celebrating their twentieth year playing together, the Bill Charlap Trio will be taking up residence at the Village Vanguard on September 5 for two weeks performing songs from the album, among other uniquely chosen repertoire from their vast trio book. 

The Bill Charlap Trio is the pinnacle of jazz piano trio playing and has been a New York City staple since 1997. Uptown Downtown is a collection of essential melodies from Broadway, theater and jazz. Composers such as Gerry Mulligan (Charlap's friend and early mentor), Richard Rodgers, Jim Hall, Duke Ellington, Michael Leonard, among others, are represented here. The cross section of theater, Broadway, and jazz is Bill Charlap's silver lining: where Thelonious Monk meets Stephen Sondheim, where Gershwin meets Gillespie. 

The album features songs such as "Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most," "The One I Love Belongs With Somebody Else," "Sophisticated Lady," "I'm All Smiles," among other refreshing choices. 

The trio is in breathtaking form on this album, their chemistry on full display. Bill Charlap says of his trio partners, " Peter Washington and Kenny Washington are both virtuosos on their instruments, and they have the ability to think and play with a sense of composition and instant arrangement that elevates them to the highest strata of rhythm section teams ever. At this point we can feel the multi layered communication which has developed from so many years of performing together plus the instant chemistry that we felt the first time we played…at the same time…every time"." 

Bill Charlap Trio:

Notes From New York

Playing a melody is an art in itself, one that necessitates experience, intuition and humility. In the jazz capitol of the world, New York City, Bill Charlap is considered one of the great interpreters of melodies, songs written for musicals, and Broadway shows or films that when moved from their original source, become the standards that jazz artists make their own. For his debut impulse! recording, Notes From New York, Charlap has defined and refined his position in the pantheon of New York piano stylists, whose highly influential jazz piano icons include Tommy Flanagan, Hank Jones, and Jimmy Rowles. Tony Bennett, with whom Charlap has recently collaborated with on the Grammy® Award-winning album The Silver Lining: The Songs of Jerome Kern, effuses further that "in the tradition of Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, George Shearing, Count Basie and Duke Ellington - Bill Charlap joins them as one of the greatest American musicians of our time."