Players - Downbeat

BLUNT
ASSESSMENT
54 DOWNBEAT April 2009
WITH HIS MUSIC
AND WORDS, MARTIAL
SOLAL KNOWS NO
OTHER WAY BUT TO
SPEAK HIS MIND
By Ted Panken
Photo by Carol Epinette/Dalle
On New Year’s Eve in Orvieto, Italy,
Martial Solal, having just arrived in
town, sat with his wife at a center
table in the second-floor banquet room of
Ristorante San Francisco, where a raucous
cohort of musicians, personnel and guests of
the Umbria Jazz Winter festival were eating,
drinking and making merry. Solal quietly
sipped mineral water and nibbled on his food.
“It is difficult to dine here,” Solal said with a
shrug, before departing to get his rest.
It seemed that the 81-year-old pianist would need it: His
itinerary called for concerts on each of the first three days of
2009: a duo with Italian pianist Stefano Bollani, a solo recital
and a duo with vibraphonist Joe Locke. On the duo encounters,
Solal opted for dialogue, accommodating the personalities
of the younger musicians. With Locke, who played torrents of
notes, he comped and soloed sparingly but tellingly, switching
at one point from a rubato meditation into Harlem stride,
before a transition to another rhythmic figure. It was his fifth
encounter with Bollani, who is apt to launch a musical joke at