Peter Watrous: Improvising With Intensity

[The pianist Darrell Grant's show at the Iridium on Tuesday night mixed ~two strategies: precise and complicated small-group arrangements and ferocious interplay. Mr. Grant was leading his first Important New York engagement, and he came prepared, producing a set that swung. mightily from the first note, and offered up small group improvisation at its most intense.

Mr. Grant's compositions work around bass figures and drum patterns, along with tempo changes, and an improviser's reaction to it all. At the club, he set a riff for the drummer Carl Allen to solo against, and during improvisations repeated ideas popped up, adding structure to the pieces. As a pianist, Mr. Grant likes busy solos that jump around; he'll slam his left hand as counterpoint to a run, or cram notes together for heavy chordal passages. He likes blues ideas, and on an unaccompanied version of, "Blue in Green," bold blues figures added motifs to the improvisation.

In a radically rearranged version of "What Is This Thing Called Love?," Mr. Grant and his rhythm section moved from Latin rhythms to tempo changes. Mr. Grant and Mr. Allen faced off, with Mr. Grant placing figures percussively in the middle of his improvisations, only to have Mr. Allen answer with new ideas or glosses on Mr. Grant's originals.

But it was Mr. Grant's arrangements that made the most impression. He has figured out how to bring together all the various ploys that a modern rhythm section can use; and meld them so that a performance is rarely stationary. It's a type of rhythm section virtuosity that's becoming more and more common, and Mr. Grant and his band have mastered it.

New York Times - March 4, 1995