Reviews

In late 2020 Matthew Shipp published an essay on a particular, idiosyncratic group of fellow pianists belonging to a group he dubbed Black Mystery School. He wrote: “Mystery School posits an alternative touch – something that does not directly fall within the mainstream’s easily digestible paradigm of being able to play the instrument, even though the practitioners of the Mystery School are obviously highly skilled virtuosos whose touch, language, and articulation are extremely hard to copy.” All but one of the musicians Shipp cites are Black, but does say that race need not be an obstacle. Among the people he names are Thelonious Monk, Herbie Nichols, and Hasaan Ibn Ali, all of whom are interpreted on one of the year’s greatest albums, The Hasaan, Hope & Monk Project (Driff), by the Pandelis Karayorgis Trio. The Boston-based pianist has long revealed an affinity for idiosyncratic keyboardists of the bebop era, with previous work exploring Lennie Tristano.
Peter Margasak, The Quietus, Dec 6, 2022 (link)

In 2020 Matthew Shipp wrote a provocative article identifying Black Mystery School Pianists, a series of musicians with a distinct sonic/rhythmic identity that would distinguish them from mainstream jazz pianists. At times I find his discussion a little vague, in terms of whom he includes fully, those partially and those he excludes, but he’s consistently adamant that it can’t be taught in a jazz school. While one might debate who’s in and who’s out, whether halfway or otherwise, it’s an important distinction, even going so far as to include a single Caucasian pianist in the fold, Ran Blake. Consider those he includes—a school that begins with Thelonious Monk then proceeds with such immediate associates as Elmo Hope and Herbie Nichols, then proceeds with Randy Weston, Cecil Taylor and Mal Waldron to Hassan Ibn Ali and Andrew Hill then on to Sun Ra and Horace Tapscott. It’s a fascinating stream and it suggests much of Shipp’s own ancestral line.

Pianist Pandelis Karayorgis’s exploration of a significant component of that tradition was immediately inspired by the 2021 appearance of Metaphysics (Omnivore) an unreleased 1965 Atlantic recording by Hassan Ibn Ali, the brilliant and largely unknown Philadelphia musician who had worked on his harmonic and modal explorations with John Coltrane and who had a profound influence on McCoy Tyner’s style formation and vocabulary. The result is this hour-long CD by Karayorgis and his frequent associates, bassist Nate McBride and drummer Luther Gray. The repertoire alternates Karayorgis’s transcriptions of four of Hasaan’s Metaphysics pieces along with three compositions from Elmo Hope’s 1953-54 recordings and six of Monk’s classic works. The group of three follows the association of Monk and Hope and Hope’s influence on Hasaan.

There’s no easy way to wind one’s path through any of these composers’ works. Monk, for example, built pieces out of a collection of eccentricities that just happened to combine into works of genius. To some extent, the others followed his example in developing their own methodologies. Here Karayorgis manages to be both true to the works and to himself, managing smooth transit through craggy passages without tripping over outcrops or chiseling at sharp edges. There’s a technical brilliance fully in service to the music, embracing, opening and expanding it in a way that is true to the distinct identities of the works as well as their composers, but Karyorgis never veers into mere imitation. In a few instances McBride and Gray take the opening chorus, McBride’s powerful lower-register patterns (reminiscent here of Monk’s bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik, another recently rediscovered major figure) at once emphasizing the oblique harmonies and slightly skewed propulsions of the material, the latter playfully declared as well in Gray’s rich elaboration of multiple states of time.

Ten studio recordings bracket three live recordings from The Lilypad in Cambridge, Massachusetts – Hope’s “Abdullah”, Monk’s “Evidence”, Hasaan’s “El Hasaan” – and they seem especially buoyant, playful complexities that transcend their composers’ frequent personal difficulties. Further on, Hasaan’s very Monk-like “Epitome” and his “Viceroy” (somehow at once swinging and elliptical with a fine solo by McBride that levitates into his upper register) surround Monk’s “Trinkle Tinkle”, a piece I can’t separate from Coltrane’s wondrous 1956 performance and which here somehow ties neatly to Hasaan’s association with Coltrane and Tyner. These ties are, by the way, made explicit in a 2021 2-CD set of Hasaan’s assorted unreleased recordings, Retrospect in Retirement of Delay: The Solo Recordings (Omnivore), a collection that effectively adds an essential figure to the history of jazz piano.
Stuart Broomer, The Free Jazz Collective, February 18, 2023 (link)

American-Greek, Boston-based pianist Pandelis Karayorgis is also the co-founder of Driff Records, with another ex-pat, Dutch sax player Jorrit Dijkstra. His recent releases document the vibrant free music scene of Boston. [...]

Karayorgis discovered recently a lost 1965 recording of the still underrated American, Philadelphia-based pianist-composer Hassan Ibn Ali, Metaphysics (Omnivore, 2021), known today mostly as a great admirer of pianist-composer Elmo Hope. Karayorgis immediately felt the need to transcribe and understand Ibn Ali’s compositions and to present them alongside pieces by Thelonious Monk and Hope, who, like Ibn Ali, stood out for their brilliant—yet unorthodox—writing and their highly personal approach to playing the piano.

Karayorgis studied before the work of innovative composers like Duke Ellington (himself Monk’s spiritual father), Monk (including the brilliant 12-tone Monk inventions of German pianist Alexander Von Schlippenbach), Lennie Tristano, Eric Dolphy and Steve Lacy. The Hasaan, Hope & Monk Project, with long-standing comrades double bass player McBride and drummer Luther Gray, offers a brilliant and most interesting context of the seminal Bebop legacy, full of musical and historical connections. It is a heartfelt, engaging homage that swings joyfully and is performed with wise, economic command. And it is a perfect opportunity to become familiar with Ibn Ali’s idiosyncratic compositions like «Stars over Marrakesh», which resonates with Dizzy Gillespie’s «A Night In Tunisia», the elusive, bluesy melody of «Atlantic Ones» or his Monk-ish «El Hasaan» and «Viceroy».
Eyal Hareuveni, February 19, 2023 (link)

Thelonious Monk is quoted as saying, "the piano ain't got no wrong notes." He most certainly said this in response to the criticism of his approach to both composing and performance. In what sounds blasphemous today, critics and other musicians in the early days of bebop flat out said he couldn't play. Perhaps the lesson here is that nonpareil outliers who maintain the conviction of their methods ultimately prevail. That most certainly is the driving force behind pianist Pandelis Karayorgis' The Hasaan, Hope & Monk Project.

Karayorgis has throughout his career explored Monk's music in solo, duo, and trio formats. Having developed an appetite for Monk's music, a pianist can explore the music of similarly idiosyncratic pianists. Often, their eccentric approaches become less abstruse when set side-by-side with Monk's. Until the year 2021 only one disc The Max Roach Trio Featuring The Legendary Hasaan (Atlantic, 1965) made the pianist Hasaan Ibn Ali available to listeners. We were blessed in 2021 with the discovery of two 'lost' tapes from the 1960s, Metaphysics: The Lost Atlantic Album (Omnivore Recordings, 2021) and Retrospect In Retirement Of Delay: The Solo Recordings (Omnivore Recordings, 2021). Karayorgis has covered Ibn Ali's music in the past, and here he also adds the music of Elmo Hope to this trio session.

Together with longtime collaborators, bassist Nate McBride and drummer Luther Gray, the pianist tackles six Monk compositions, five by Ibn Ali, and three by Hope. The trio takes on the compositions, playing them in a straightforward manner, as if to say that Monk's music—or for that matter Ibn Ali or Hope's compositions—are uncomplicated. It's just that the trio makes them sound so natural and unforced. McBride's extended intro to "Off Minor" tips the ear to the Monkian finger dance to come and the swirl of "Criss Cross," and "Trinkle Tinkle" are comfort food for the soul. Less familiar yet equally as uplifting and heartening are the Ibn Ali and Hope compositions. Each are idiosyncratic and distinct in their approach. Hope's music is fashioned by a lyrical swing and Karayorgis arranges the music for a complete trio sound. Because of their quirkiness, Ibn Ali's compositions might easily be misidentified as those of unheard Monk compositions. His music and that of Hope (or Herbie Nichols for that matter) are well worth preserving, especially in the hands of a trio such as this.
(4 out of 5 stars)
Mark Corroto, December 20, 2022, All About Jazz (link)

Driff Records was formed in 2012 by pianist Pandelis Karayorgis and reeds/electronics player Jorrit Dijkstra, two European musicians who settled in Boston, Massachusetts, in order for each to have a stable release platform for their respective projects. Karayorgis appears on the three albums under consideration here. Each release highlights a particular aspect of his efforts to sustain a creative life in a town not particularly known for its friendliness to improvised music.

The Hasaan, Hope & Monk Project explores the qualities linking the music of the three titular pianists. Thelonious Monk, whose music has been a lodestone for Karayorgis since the 1980s, needs no introduction. Hasaan Ibn Ali was a player/composer of similarly idiosyncratic rigour but far less renown, who only managed to issue one LP during his lifetime; the recent release of two posthumous volumes is what instigated Karayorgis to undertake this endeavour. Elmo Hope is included because of his personal and musical influences on the other two. Karayorgis, accompanied by bassist Nate McBride and drummer Luther Gray, finds in their combined books a goldmine of detour-laden melodies and sense-satisfying rhythms, which he negotiates with evident respect and delight.
Bill Meyer, The Wire - February 2023 (Issue 468)

De Amerikaanse pianist Hasaan Ibn Ali was tot voor kort alleen bekend van één plaatopname, ‘The Max Roach Trio, Featuring the Legendary Hasaan’ (1965). Hij maakte daarna voor Atlantic nog een album dat op de plank bleef liggen en bij een brand verloren leek te zijn gegaan. Twee jaar geleden dook die plaat, ‘Metaphysics’ echter ineens op. Voor de Griekse Amerikaan Pandelis Karayorgis was dit een mooie aanleiding om de composities op dat album uit te zoeken en zelf op de plaat te zetten. Voor ‘The Hasaan, Hope & Monk Project’ combi- neerde hij vier van die stukken met werk van Monk en Elmo Hope (zie ook pag. 23 en verder in deze Jazzflits). Hasaan was namelijk een groot bewonde- raar van deze laatste, onderbelichte pianist/compo- nist. Dat Karayorgis een goed gevoel heeft voor eigenwijze pianisten hadden we al eerder kunnen vaststellen. Zijn trio, met bassist Nate McBride en drummer Luther Gray, is een ‘working band’ met al heel wat muzikale kilometers op de teller, en dat is te horen. De bas-vamp waarmee ‘Atlantic ones’ (van Hasaan) opent, of de kamelengang van Hope’s ‘Stars over Marrakesh’ zijn fraaie voorbeelden van de eigen draai die het drietal aan de stukken geeft. In Hasaans ‘Epitome’ horen we de invloed van Monk (zelfs op de titel) en in de uitvoering is een verwantschap tussen Karayorgis en Misha Mengel- berg hoorbaar. Het album stemt enerzijds wat droevig omdat Hasaan, Hope en Monk niet meer onder ons zijn, maar anderzijds hebben we nu ge- lukkig Pandelis Karayorgis nog.
Herman te Loo, 27 februari 2023, Jazzflits nummer 393

Until recently, American pianist Hasaan Ibn Ali was known only from one record, "The Max Roach Trio, Featuring the Legendary Hasaan" (1965). He then made another album for Atlantic that remained on the shelf and seemed to have been lost in a fire. Two years ago, however, that record, 'Metaphysics' suddenly surfaced. For Greek American Pandelis Karayorgis, this was a great opportunity to sort out the compositions on that album and put them on the record himself. For 'The Hasaan, Hope & Monk Project' he combined four of those pieces with work by Monk and Elmo Hope. Indeed, Hasaan was a great admirer of the latter, underexposed pianist/composer. That Karayorgis has a good feel for wayward pianists we had already noticed. His trio, with bassist Nate McBride and drummer Luther Gray, is a "working band" with quite a few musical miles on the clock, and it shows. The bass-vamp with which 'Atlantic ones' (by Hasaan) opens, or the camel-step of Hope's 'Stars over Marrakesh' are fine examples of the trio's own spin on the pieces. In Hasaan's "Epitome," we hear the influence of Monk (even on the title) and a kinship between Karayorgis and Misha Mengelberg is audible in the performance. On the one hand, the album is somewhat sad because Hasaan, Hope and Monk are no longer with us, but on the other hand, fortunately we still have Pandelis Karayorgis.
Herman te Loo, February 27 2023, Jazzflits #393
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

Expressing unique takes on the classic jazz piano trio format, four bands – two Italian and two American – independently refresh the idiom focusing on original material or creating homages. ... Taking the pianist-honoring concept several steps further, Boston-based pianist Pandelis Karayorgis bassist Nate McBride and drummer Luther Gray, who individually have played with innovators such as Ken Vandermark and Damon Smith, interpret six Monk lines plus three Elmo Hope compositions and four by Hasaan Ibn Ali. ... Ironically the Monk compositions on The Hasaan, Hope & Monk Project are now so-much part of the Jazz lexicon that abutting the almost-obscure tunes by Philadelphia’s Hassan and the Bronx’s Hope that they almost sound like Songbook candidates. That would likely be sweet revenge for Monk, whose music was scorned during the first part of his career. Although not far out in the 21st Century. the themes’ grooves, repetitive choruses and structured expressiveness also keep them from becoming free music. However Karayorgis/McBride/Gray do their best to emphasize Monk’s individuality – and even add to it. For instance “Trinkle” (sic) is given a darker rendition which almost negates its tinkling character as the pianist slides and shuffles notes and variations, makes space for a brief drum break, and concludes with the final phrase played twice. “Work” works because the heavier than expected piano part reveals a stop-time theme as bongo-like drum slaps and a walking bass line add the swing. A friend of Monk’s, Hope’s tunes are also post-Bop. Judiciously jagged and somewhat gloomy, Karayorgis’ pedal point rhythm on “Stars Over Marrakesh” avoids false exoticism, but subtly suggests the Maghreb at the end with McBride’s arco emphasis as Gray’s cymbal coloration and rim shots push the theme back to Jazz. Seriousness is also emphasized on “Chips”, as circular keyboard reflections pull back to expose varied harmonies and melodies, pull forward with woody double bass thumps and carefully positioned drum smacks, and finally a recap the head. Most obscure, Hasaan’s tunes seem to bounce between Monk’s unexpected emphasis and Hope’s swing sense – or at least that’s how this trio plays them. Brighter and with kinship to 1940s ballads, pressure is also emphasized on “El Hasaan”, with press rolls and slithery keyboard work. Yet the pianist also manages to maintain the modulated beat even as he creates dramatic theme elaborations. Similarly McBride’s up-and-down, back-and-forth, stress moves the melody of “Atlantic Ocean” further away from the piano’s sparkling introduction. With tension then established, descending chords stretch the exposition into unexpected corners as bass and drums maintain a steady pulse. ... Taking inventive and idiosyncratic concepts when dealing with this combo configuration, the two Italian and two American trios demonstrate the longevity of this popular formation.
Ken Waxman, March 15, 2023, Jazz Word (link)

Liner Notes by Ted Panken:
Had pianist Pandelis Karayorgis, from Athens, Greece, been born three millennia ago and not in 1961, he might well have served the role of hierophant, the high priest who presided over the sacred rituals and ceremonial comprising the Eleusinian Mysteries, fertility festivals whose “ultimate design,” Plato wrote, was “to lead us back to the principles from which we descended, ... a perfect enjoyment of intellectual [spiritual] good.”

Instead, Karayorgis has spent much of his adult life cracking the codes of the unique songs of Thelonious Monk, to whom his peers applied the cognomen “High Priest of Bebop,” and who was, Matthew Shipp wrote recently, “the spiritual father” of the mid-20th century cohort that Shipp dubbed “The Black Mystery School of Pianists.” Shipp included among these idiosyncratic outliers Philadelphian Hassan Ibn-Ali (represented herein by five selections) and Harlemite Elmo Hope (represented by three, along with six by Monk), Chicagoans Andrew Hill and Sun Ra, and New Yorkers Cecil Taylor, Mal Waldron and Randy Weston. Each one, Karayorgis states self-descriptively, “had an extremely focused and developed approach that left out anything extraneous to their particular vision, and pursued this vision relentlessly.”

If you, the listener, know a reasonable percentage of the three dozen albums on Karayorgis’ Bandcamp page that feature him as leader or collaborator, you’re aware of the multiple pathways by which he’s refracted information gleaned from exhaustive study of these iconoclastic masters – and eminent sui generis individualists like Duke Ellington (himself Monk’s spiritual father), Lennie Tristano, Eric Dolphy and Steve Lacy – into his own artistic vision, explicated with a vividly distinctive improvisational and compositional vocabulary. Over the past decade-and-a-half he’s documented the development of his own material, presenting himself in “the big room,” as Jackie McLean once described the open settings that Karayorgis favors. On earlier albums, which featured some two-dozen Monk songs and an array of pieces by the aforementioned Mystery School contingent, Karayorgis often deconstructed, sometimes deploying the Fender Rhodes as his vehicle for timbrally phantasmagoric flights of fancy, sometimes “third-streaming” with a focus on harmonic abstraction – always stretching parameters.

But on The Hasaan, Hope and Monk Project, 37 years after he moved from Greece to Boston, Karayorgis takes “a leap of faith,” addressing “the material whose DNA has shaped so much of my musical language” on its own terms of engagement, without embellishment, situating himself somewhere in between the straight-ahead attitude of bop-generation Black American Monkphiles like Barry Harris, Tommy Flanagan, and Kenny Barron (himself an acolyte of Hassan as a Philadelphia teenager) and the brilliant 12-tone Monk inventions of German outcat Alexander Von Schlippenbach or the sardonic-ironic soliloquies of Dutch saboteur Misha Mengelberg. He continues: “I feel that I can approach these songs from a different angle now, without having to deconstruct as much as I used to, and bring different aspects of the compositions into play.”

The project gestated with the 2021 release of a “lost,” never-released 1965 quartet album by Hassan titled Metaphysics, which included several previously unrecorded tunes. “I immediately transcribed five of them,” Karayorgis says. “I had an intuitive urge to bring together these different composers and do an album totally different from my recent work – all AABA forms, which I haven’t done in many years. Surrounding Monk’s compositions with pieces by Hasaan and Hope creates an interesting context full of musical and historical connections. I don’t think there’s one thing that threads them all together. Monk and Hasaan are perhaps closer together in their angularity and surprising ideas, unique harmonies and overall ‘out there-ness’ both as composers and as improvisers. With Hope it’s more subtle and nuanced, as he works within the prevailing harmonic and gestural conventions of the time while maintaining an extremely strong voice of his own. From what we read about his close musical relationship and friendship with Monk, including exploring musical ideas together, co-writing tunes, etc., it’s not surprising to see a similar ideas-based concept at work.

“All three are ideas-driven composers, Monk most of all. As he plays, you can hear the cogs turning in his mind. But it’s never cerebral. It’s heartfelt, direct and rooted in swing. You can explore the ideas in different musical contexts, but something about maintaining that framework of form and time brings out certain temporal and harmonic aspects of the pieces that deconstructing puts aside. It’s a challenge to do this in a non-imitative or non-rote way. How can you keep something fresh and engaging so that, as you listen, you want to know where it’s going to go next, what’s going to happen? I feel that keeping the forms and time intact reinforces an aspect of the narrative flow of the piece, and you can follow the flow of ideas in a directional way. So whether it’s Monk or Hasaan or Hope, my approach comes always from developing the ideas, respecting that the tune is at the center, so you can always feel its presence. It’s not about playing changes, or blowing, or dexterity. Economy of expression appeals to me – getting rid of the extraneous stuff and narrowing down to the essential, to what’s real, without ornaments, effects and flashy exhibitions. It’s the importance of leaving stuff out so that what’s left can resonate and make a bigger impact.”

Bassist Nate McBride and drummer Luther Gray, both long-standing partners of Karayorgis, sustain that mindset throughout the program. Actually, McBride introduced Karayorgis to the 1964 Atlantic album, Max Roach Trio Featuring the Legendary Hasaan, once obscure, now well-known to cognoscenti, which was, until the recent release of Metaphysics and Retrospect In Retirement Of Delay: The Solo Recordings, the sole document of Hasaan’s musical production.

“Nate’s trajectory makes him an important component of both the Boston and the Chicago scenes. He spent a decade in Chicago, from 2002-2012, working with many key people from that scene and co-developing the sound associated with the creative music scene of that city, and beyond. We met in Boston at New England Conservatory and started playing together around 1991. We’ve played and recorded together in many different contexts, including a lot of sessions with Mat and Joe Maneri in the mid-‘90s and our formative trio with Randy Peterson. No matter what the context, Nate is always able to zero in on the essence of what’s needed and provide support in the most indirect but also concrete and imaginative way. His playing can be extremely powerful and sensitive at the same time, and deeply informed by a keen awareness of the music, past and present. He also has a great sound, which is central to his musical identity.

“Luther moved to Boston from Washington, D.C. in 1999 and quickly became one of the most sought-after drummers in the Boston jazz and creative music scene, playing in a wide variety of contexts: with Joe Morris, with George Garzone and Jerry Bergonzi, but also leading his own groups for which he writes his own material. He’s an amazing musician, equally comfortable doing very free stuff and straight ahead projects. We’ve worked together all these years in various groups, including as a trio with Nate doing our own music, and also with our collective quintet, Cutout, that features [trombonist] Jeb Bishop and [alto saxophonist] Jorrit Dijkstra.”

Before entering New Haven’s Firehouse 12 in [tk] to record 11 of the 14 selections, the trio played the repertoire live on various occasions in 2021-22, trying different approaches – adding intros, vamps, and other accouterments – towards constructing a point of view. Listeners may find it interesting to A-B these versions with the originals, most of them readily available on streaming media. As examples, let’s cite Karayorgis’ thought process on the songs by Elmo Hope.

The trio addresses “Stars over Marrakesh” – a “tune with a lot of character,” vibrationally akin to “Night in Tunisia” in the half-step vamp, incorporating in the A section “a harmonic minor scale whose upper four notes are the same as the familiar hijaz tetrachord of Arabic music (a much-used device whenever composers wish to evoke a North African flavor)” and containing “a beautifully contrasting B section with big piano voicings” – with an ear to the composer’s 1953 Blue Note recording with Percy Heath and Philly Joe Jones, but “a bit more open and using the opening vamp later on for a bass solo – and keeping the three cymbal crashes.”

For Hope’s “Abdullah,” from a Hope-led 1954 quintet date volcanically propelled by Art Blakey (his adopted Muslim name was Abdullah Ibn Buhaina), Karayorgis asked Luther Gray to play brushes. “It’s a very direct and powerful tune and I wanted the intensity to come from within it, from a more contemplative place. So in our version you hear Luther doing some double time brushes while giving the piano a lot of space.” Also from that quintet session is “Chips,” “the most beboppy tune of the three Hope selections, with a fantastic, beautiful melody; we state the head only once, at the end, after the piano solo and bass solo.”

Hasaan’s “Atlantic Ones,” recorded both on Metaphysics and The Solo Recordings, is a disguised blues. “You have to listen carefully to hear the blues progression — he places all these other unexpected notes in there, then the blowing happens over a completely different set of chords. We tried to play it as a blues, but also keep it a bit obscure harmonically.” The Monkish “Viceroy” was based on a jingle for Hasaan’s favorite, long discontinued, cigarette brand. “El Hassan” “is the weirdest of the four in terms of the chord changes and the melody, which is why I love it.” “Epitome” “is close to Monk because of the consecutive dominant chords and repeating melodic shape in the A sections – it’s very exciting, so much fun to play.”

Returning to Monk, Karayorgis observes that the project compelled him to reexamine his relationship with material he’s been intimate with for more three decades. “When I was playing ‘Trinkle Tinkle’ in 1992, for example, it was much more about flow and the shapes and gestures of the melody. This time I felt I could get into the chordal structure in much greater detail and pull things out which I didn’t earlier.

“Although ‘free’ was the natural direction I gravitated to with my training in more traditional jazz forms, the truth is that I am not a straight-ahead player and I am not a free player. I’m something in between. Or I’m a free player with a background in bebop. For better or worse, you have a way you walk, a way you gesticulate, a way you play – and that comes through. Many times I’ve wished that I didn’t stick out so much, that I could sound a little more ordinary. But I always had this thing, which I’ve embraced; I’ve realized it’s my voice and I have to make the best of it.”