Sometimes it’s easy to forget how social this music can be. On Tuesday evening, Aug. 12, Eric Reed reminded us, with a Hampton Hawes-inspired performance that was charming in a way that feels much less common today than maybe it once was.
His facility as a soloist is dazzling (check out his prologue to “Autumn Leaves” sometime), but he’s also a generous accompanist who visibly enjoys putting his sidemen — Mike Gurrola on bass and Marcello Carelli on drums were wonderful, btw — in a position to show their best. It’s all in the service of evoking feeling, sharing a bit of his own soul with the audience, and filtering the essence of the music's source material through an undeniably modern aesthetic. It hits with the same feeling; it's just...elevated, evolved.
On Tuesday night, Aug. 12, 2024, pianist Eric Scott Reed was cooking on all cylinders. A consummate performer, he didn’t just deliver musically; he peppered the set with personal stories and inherited yarns from the musicians’ circuit that delighted the audience and added valuable context to the musical selections.
Some guys love what they can do with the tunes; other guys just love the tunes and take it from there. Eric loves the tunes, and his treatments tell you all you need to know about his reverence for the material. If you want a beautiful artist who with a true professional’s ability to connect with an audience, you’ve got to check him out.
