Billy Hart Quartet

[mjzee]

Interviewing Ethan Iverson and Billy Hart in a jazz club is like trying to catch simultaneous Pitt and Jolie gazes on the red carpet. The competition, a steady stream of kibitzers and well-wishers, is fierce, but the struggle illustrates what the two musicians have in common. Iverson, a white, 39-year-old pianist raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and Hart, a black, D.C.-born drummer who turned 71 last November—bandmates in the quartet that performs and records under Hart’s name, as on a beautiful new ECM LP, All Our Reasons—both relish the age-old jazz tradition known as the Hang. Whether or not you’re performing, you show up and engage in chitchat that’s light and often profane (“That’s the real shit,” Hart whispered to Iverson as he watched Marion Felder play vintage N’awlins-style drums at Birdland this past February, prior to Hart’s own gig with the quintet Contact), but dead serious in its way. Between sets, Hart and Felder traded obeisances as Iverson geeked out over classical virtuoso Marc-André Hamelin with fellow pianist Ehud Asherie.

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TONY

[mr jazz]

Hart amazed me with his energy but not his skill (that was established in my mind long ago) at the Cookers show in DC a few months ago. A very nice person as well. I sat a foot away from his kit for 2 sets and I wish every drummer I know could have watched his performance with me

Edited April 15, 2012 by mr jazz