Pianist Esteban Castro - one of the greats, and I kid you not.

[AllenLowe]

There's a young pianist in NYC named Esteban Castro, young, just out of Julliard.

I will state this directly: Esteban is one of the greatest jazz pianists who ever lived, and I mean ever, and I say this unequivocally, after a lifetime of listening to everything from 1920 to the present.

I am trying to think of how to describe his playing - it is historically comprehensive, but never in a self conscious way. He just sits at the piano with casual ease and turns out phrase after phrase of brilliant, compelling, artistically meaningful music. In term of musical attitude he has some resemblance to Jaki Byard, but that is primarily in the ingenious way in which he incorporates his incredibly varied, but always personal, ideas of playing. He is astounding.

We recorded together not too long ago, and I basically knew what he can do, but he still surprised me - bits and pieces of Tristano, an amazing Fats-Waller-into-stride passage that just blew me away, and a deep understanding of Bud Powell. He can read, he can play inside/outside/upside down, harmonically speaking. He even did an uncanny summoning of Monk on one piece that was not Monkish in the usual sense, but instead a personalization of Monk's way of fusing melody and harmony.

Another thing I love about his playing is that it is non-ideological: no systems, no repetitive patterns, no blues cliches. He is the real thing.

I will post some more of his stuff eventually, but here's a clip from a few years back which gives a sense of his incredible reach and sense of line:

 

 

Edited 1 hour ago by AllenLowe