I Will

For over thirty years, Larry Goldings has been hailed as one of the greatest jazz organists of his generation, a premise made salient with the continued success of his long-standing organ trio with guitarist Peter Bernstein and drummer Bill Stewart. However, the brightly glowing accolades for his organ playing have perhaps blinded the jazz-loving public to Goldings' equally astonishing and singularly unique talents on the piano, beyond those fortunate enough to catch a live show in Los Angeles (his home since 2001).  Thankfully, Goldings is addressing the imbalance in perception with a rarity for him: a live piano trio album, his first in all those years as a professional musician. I Will features Goldings on piano, along with Karl McComas-Reichl on bass and Christian Euman on drums, three of the most inventive rhythm section players in L.A. The trio was recorded  On an October night in 2023, this new trio debuted at Sam First, the intimate listening room near LAX Airport, known for its cozy, living room vibe and pristine, audiophile-grade sound. They returned the following spring for an encore performance, and both nights were recorded using Sam First’s state-of-the-art analog to digital recording setup. However, it was only after Goldings heard the results that he decided to make an album. "It's probably good that we didn't know we were going to put it out at that point," Goldings says. "I was pleasantly surprised to realize that we definitely had a record."  That the album is live contextualizes it with other recorded shows by notable piano trios – Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Fred Hersch (Goldings' third cousin), Brad Mehldau, et al – and the brilliant performance of Goldings' trio invites and deserves such lofty comparisons. For Goldings, this album not only serves as a proclamation of his pianistic prowess, but also a bit of a reckoning (or reconciliation) for him as a pianist. It's been 27 years since he released his first piano trio album, Awareness, with bassist Larry Grenadier and the great Paul Motian on drums, after Goldings was already well-known as an organist.  "I think I hired Paul with the thought that he would steer me away from clichés, and to generally free things up,” Goldings says.  A signature track from that early album, the Gershwin evergreen "Embraceable You," was done in complete rubato, out of time and very open harmonically. It's akin to a time capsule to hear the same tune and arrangement reprised so many years later, on I Will. How has Goldings' piano playing evolved over that span? "I'm less worried about fitting into somebody's expectation of how a piano trio should sound, or what a piano player should be able to do," he answers. "I wish I could say I've logged in so many hours over the years as a piano player, and that's led to some kind of breakthrough. Instead, it's just been that the older I get, the more comfortable I feel with my choices." Choices informed by all the music Goldings has been exposed to in his wide-ranging career. "I think as a result perhaps of some of the non-jazz gigs that I've done – particularly the really authentic settings like being with James Taylor and Maceo Parker – it's drawn out these other interests that I've always had. Not to mention seeing the potential for getting audiences involved in a different way and not just playing for musicians, which is often a jazz musician mindset." Goldings' material on I Will certainly reflects a populist approach to his artful eclecticism, from his edgy, odd-time original blues "Roach" (inspired by drummer Max Roach's own composition, "Driva'man") and his hero's-journey storybook piece, "Sing Song," to the traditionally hard-swinging "It Ain't Necessarily So," another Gershwin classic. The trio also grooves, whether via the extroverted Afro-Latin clave of Mario Bauzá's "Mambo Inn" or the introspective folk-rock beat of Judee Sill's "Jesus Was a Cross Maker." Conversely, the ballads float on suspensions of time and belief; on "Embraceable You," and on Paul McCartney's "I Will" and "Somewhere" from West Side Story, the Leonard Bernstein masterpiece he recorded many years ago in similar fashion with guitarist Jim Hall. "I was lucky enough to be around people like Jim Hall," Goldings says. "He could play so sparsely and thoughtfully, with the purest of sounds and a deep understanding of the of the song. Never any showboating or over-playing." Those insights power Goldings' musical core, ever more in this new chapter in the storied career of a generational organist – and pianist. When asked to complete the sentence, "I will...," Goldings offers a laundry list of resolutions: "I will...play more piano, that's one. I will concentrate on having fun with the music – I think that's the most important thing, and I know that I will particularly with those guys. And I will worry less, I will exercise more, and I will be grateful that I still can do this." -Album bio written by Gary Fukushima