"Follow pianist Larry Karush around the musical world; it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than American Airlines, and he won’t lose your luggage."
Greg Burk, MetalJazz
“I’m basically a boogie-woogie piano player,” Larry Karush told the crowd gathered last summer for a Q&A session at his undergrad alma mater, Portland's Reed College. “And sometimes I think that all the stuff that I’ve developed goes back to that root of rhythm or energy, and how you work with that. Over the course of the last number of years I’ve tried to expand the vocabulary of what I can spontaneously play with.”
Yet to call Karush merely a “boogie-woogie” pianist would be like calling Salman Rushdie merely a typist. An interpreter and absorber of a startling array of world music textures, Karush is the Left Coast musician incarnate, representing the state’s diverse cultural stewing pot by synthesizing sounds from North India, West Africa and Brazil with jazz, classical music and 20th century minimalism.
Kaursh entered Western music history on April 24, 1976 at New York’s Town Hall as one of the four pianos providing the expansive vistas for the debut of Steve Reich’s seminal minimalist masterpiece Music for 18 Musicians. It was an auspicious gig a young pianist—he had recently earned a master's degree in musical performance from New York University—and a prescient one. Under Karush’s fingers lies the whole history of American piano, from Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Erik Satie to James P. Johnson and Bill Evans, from angular experimentation to breathless lyricism, from deep blues and country twang and tabla-fueled drone. The fact that he weaves all of this into a thoroughly original musical approach brings to mind Reich’s famous quote: “All music turns out to be ethnic music.”
Larry Karush with fellow composers/Californians/beach bums Alex Shapiro and Terry Riley
Karush calls his richly textured, often epic musical etudes “comprovisations,” and like Keith Jarrett and Cecil Taylor before him, they are journeys that begin on the pulse of an idea, a theme, an image, and travel into moment-by-moment adventure, evoking the wide spaces and contemplative wind tunnels of a long desert car ride through the Mojave. Oh, and he swings, too.
Karush's list of collaborators is as extensive as his sonic palette: John Abercrombie, Jane Ira Bloom, Scott Amendola, Glen Moore, David Schiff, Kendall Kay, Glen Velez, Dan Morris, Dave Carpenter, John Bergamo, Junior Homrich, Bob Fernandez, Eddie Gomez, Jay Clayton, Dave Friedman, Chris Colangelo, Bennie Wallace, Oregon, Kanai Dutta, Francisco Aguabella, Geetha Ramanathan and Terry and Gylan Riley. But for this year's Angel City Jazz Festival, Karush will be premiering a brand new solo “comprovisation” entitled “The Salsa Way,” which explores the interplay and juxtaposition of linear and rhythmic counterpoint, salsa and afro-cuban rhythms, open thematic improvisation, piano ostinati, and 20th century harmony. The piece was composed while Karush was a Alpert/Ucross Foundation artisty-in-residence.
Larry Karush Quartet with Chris Colangelo on bass, Kendall Kay on drums and Miles Shrewsbery on percussion (Live at LACMA, Dec. 29, 2006, podcast)
Mountains & Rivers: Larry Karush and David Schiff pay tribute to Terry Riley.
Larry playing with Steve Reich
MARK YOUR CALENDAR:
Larry Karush will give a live performance/interview on John Schneider's Global Village (KPFK 90.7-FM, Sept. 3, 11am). Larry''s ACJF set is at 9:15pm on Sunday, Sept. 6, 2009.
