Bill Charlap Solo Piano: Jazz in Conversation

A rare, intimate afternoon at the piano with jazz master Bill Charlap, part performance, part conversation

Bill Charlap is one of the most gifted interpreters of the American songbook working today. Born in New York City into a deeply musical family, his father was Broadway composer Moose Charlap, whose credits include Peter Pan, and his mother is singer Sandy Stewart, a Grammy nominated vocalist who toured with Benny Goodman. Charlap began playing piano at age three and went on to work with Gerry Mulligan, Phil Woods, Tony Bennett, Wynton Marsalis, and Ron Carter, among many others. Time magazine has written that he “approaches a song the way a lover approaches his beloved, no matter how imaginative or surprising his take on a song is, he invariably zeroes in on its essence.”

For this special Sunday afternoon engagement, Charlap steps away from the trio format to offer something entirely different, an intimate, interactive solo performance he calls Jazz in Conversation. Part performance and part illumination, Charlap will play, explore, and speak directly to the audience about the music itself, the harmonic choices, the history behind a standard, the art of interpretation, offering a rare window into the mind of one of the great living jazz pianists. This is an unforgettable opportunity to experience Charlap’s artistry up close, in a setting built for exactly this kind of intimacy.