You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 7 Greatest Millennial Pianists

Episode Date: September 16, 2022

Peter and Adam dive into today's best Millennial Pianists and what they've done to earn that accolade. Check out all these artists and what they're up to by following these links!Aaron ParksSullivan FortnerTaylor EigstiMiki YamanakaJohnathan BatisteChristian SandsGlenn ZaleskiEmmet CohenHave a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Peter. Yo. You like lists? I love lists, but we're about to go down a rabbit hole. This is a veritable well of greatness. Yes, greatness. I suppose so. It's like a rabbit hole like a red pill, blue pill.

I mean, I'm a little nervous about this. I'm going to put that out there. But I'm willing to do it. I like it when you get nervous. Okay. I'm Adam Annas. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear Podcast.

Jazz. Explain. Explain brought to you today by Open Studio. Go to Open Studio. Jazz.com to go on a deeper dive on all of this. Unless, you know, of course. I'm not a fan of jazz. If you're not a fan of jazz, then you probably won't.

I didn't think you could get that in any earlier. I got it. You did. I know. I know. I love that. We get out of the way. Shout out to Fred Armisen.

Come on the show. Fred Overson. Yeah. Hashtag hashtag bring on Fred. Bring on Fred. So Peter, we got a brand new. I don't know. I don't think this is a feature, but this is going to be a series.

This is a series. Yeah. Possible feature. I don't think we could handle it. it is a feature. You know what I really like about this, though? What? You've never done this before. You have a twinkle in your eyes today. I do have a twinkle in my head. We've never done this. We've done. How many lists of sevens have we done? Well, okay, yeah. Well, list of seven we've done. You mean this specific one we're doing today? Like, but any of this entire

feature. So let me break down to the people what we're about to do. There you go. So we are going to be doing a series of our list of seven of our favorite pianists. Now, it's going to be by generation. That's right. So today we're doing our seven favorite millennial pianist. Pianist born between 1981 and 1996. Well, 1980. Well, that's the thing.

We spent more time trying to figure out what a generation is. And we learned about one generation I didn't really know about. Yeah, the silent generation where all the heavyweights are. Exactly. So, and then for next week, we'll do Generation X. Yes. Which is 1965 to 1980. I'm hoping I'll make an appearance on there.

I'm not sure if you're going to be on the millennials or the Gen X. I shouldn't be on any of them. And then after that is the baby boomer generation. Right. Baby, baby boomer, baby boomer, baby, baby boomer. Okay. 1945 to 1964. Yeah.

Or 1946, 1964. Then before that, this is the silent generation. Yes. That week, which is 1920 something, 26 to 46 or 45 or something? Yeah, until 45. Interesting, a little side note. My parents, Rose and Bill Martin, you're familiar with Rose and Bill of U.C. Bill is in the silent generation.

Nice. I found out from this research. Rose is in the boomer. Boomer. Yeah. Okay, boomer. Okay. So, although they are not very far apart in an age, you can do the math there.

But they didn't know that. I asked my dad, he's like, oh, I think I'm a little boomer. I said, because we were doing a little research down on the pod. Yeah. And learning about this. So he was excited to be in the silent generation. He was hoping to be in the greatest generation. Well, then that's the next.

The next one is 1900 and 1924-5 is the, greatest generation. That's right. And so there's a lot of And our list. I don't want to give it away, but that kind of is our greatest generation of Jess. I think the silent generation might be the greatest. Very good. Millennials are no slackers, but they're still in process. No, Gen X are slackers. The Gen X is. Famously. We're doing all the work, though, you know. Yeah. Okay, so we have. This will be fun. Yeah, we have our list here. So we actually have our seven favorite millennial panis. Now, Peter, there are eight names on this list. I think there's more than eight. One, two, three, four. Oh, that's right. They're eight.

We can't tell you why there is. We just couldn't really decide. There might be varying numbers on all of our lists of seven here, but these are our seven favorite plus one. That's right. You want to kick things off? I'll kick things off. So our very first of our favorite millennial pianist,

look at that guy. Aaron Parks. If you don't know Aaron Parks's music. Does it get any more millennial than him? I feel like he's been around a while. Well, he started so young. He's on the older side of a millennial, isn't he? I would imagine he's probably an 80s baby.

maybe mid-80s baby. He plays with a gravitas. They belies his millennial roots. And he also, he kind of got a name for himself quite young. We have to remember, though, millennials are hitting 40 now, too. So they're not babies anymore. Yeah.

A lot of people actually... A lot of people actually confuse Gen Z with millennials, right? But millennials have been around for a minute. You know, some people might even say that, I don't know, Peter, I'm the oldest millennial. The world's oldest millennial. but Aaron Parks is a stunningly brilliant pianist. We've talked about him here on Open Studio before.

We're big fans. No debate for him to be on this list. Absolutely. And I love that he's kicking it off. This is in no particular order, although we may rate things at the end. We're going to do a rating of our top three. I think for each one of these episodes,

you and I are going to really drill down on our top three. I tried to get Peter to do it, and he came up with five. So we'll see how good. So Aaron Parks, this is from his album Invisible Cinema, which is, I think, one of his greatest works. and this is the opening track Travelers. Check this out. So good, man. Listen to this.

No. There's some big time, can hear some big time Chick, Korea influence in Aaron's playing. Just an unbelievably sensitive musician. Yeah. His melodic improvisation and his melodic compositions are incredibly compelling. Just a brilliant technical touch, which you heard there, just in that first minute of travelers. You could hear, you know, the, you know, the, The dynamics between the left hand and the right hand, the pop of the left, excuse me, of the right hand is so beautiful. And the dynamic shape of the line, I think that's what really makes him a distinctive player, in my opinion.

You're a fan of it is? I'm a huge fan. Me too. Great. Way to kick things off. Okay. So we're going to keep, whoa, we are in the pod front. You know what?

That might be somebody, a millennial pianist that didn't make the list. It's upset. And is sabotaging a broadcast. Oh, no. All right. It's probably not even coming through on the market. We're going to move on now to one of my favorite millennial pianist, Mr. Sullivan Fortner, who I've known for quite some time because he's from New Orleans, as am I somewhat,

my adopted hometown. And this is a track that really kind of exemplifies Sullivan's spirit, even when he was a young teenager when I first met him up until now. He's just the same great guy. Very playful, but very, you know, just advanced technically and harmonically, just swinging. Just the consummate professional, this is changing keys from his moments preserved. We may have the album cover for this. It's a great, I think this is a fantastic cover.

This is going to be, yeah, there it is. Moments Preserve. So here we go, Changing Keys. Merv Griffin Enterprises. That's right. That inner interaction is nice, right? So good, man. I mean, it's so tricky, but it's so hard.

And he's never, you know, far from the New Orleans thing. There's a lot of kind of inside New Orleans stuff that he's playing and just genius. Love, love Sullivan. I mean, he's the first time you hear Sullivan. It's so obvious he's a young master when you hear him. Yeah. The touch is all there. The language is all there.

Spoiler alert. He may show up on my, if you're going to force me into this top three thing, he may show up on that list. They may show up on mine too. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay, cool. Next up, we have a young man. Well, see again, millennial, not that young.

But just won a Grammy this year for Best Instrumentals. album. Best instrumental pop album. And it's Taylor Ixty. Taylor Icy, big fan. Big fan. Check it out. He just subbed a gig for me

with Diane Reeves and killed it. Well, because he's a absolute killer in every way. He walked into some hard music and... He's going to be in St. Louis this weekend. Oh, is he? Yeah, at the Webster Jazz Festival. This Saturday.

I'm going to go see him. This is Hutcheonite. This is from his new record, the record that won the Grammy. Check it out. Eric Harlan on the drums here. Ever heard of him? Yeah.

A friend of the pod. Amazing. Amazing musician in Zonlau. Charles O'Tour on the guitar there. So this album, Tree Falls, man. Cool-looking video. Movie. This album, Tree Falls, has some of the best string writing I've ever heard on a jazz album

mixed with some of the best piano playing that I've heard in years. I mean, he is, again, this whole list really are, at this point, because they're not kids anymore, right? They're all established. They are all young masters. I mean, they really, this list is chock full of, you know, absolute smoke shows of players here, you know. Yeah, and I'm just looking here. Actually, the next pianist, Mickey Yamanaka, she may be the youngest on this list. She might be, she might be the swingingist on this list.

She's swing so hard. Multi-instrumentalist, too, not on what we're going to watch, but. Swing him in a kimono. In a kimono often. And, you know, kind of a stalwart at the Smalls and Mesrose scene played, Many times the jam sessions the main gig. I feel like a lot of people might not be as hip to Mickey as some of the other names on our list.

Right. Go, like follow her on socials, go check her out live. Amazing. Absolutely. So we're gonna check out a fake hero from a record of her. Well, you'll see who's on here. Cool video here. Let me just show one thing that I do not like about this video.

Sorry. Look at that. Oh, cubs. Do we like, we don't like that at all. Are they AAA or MLB? I always forget. Well, this year. Steve Nelson.

Yeah. Doesn't get better than that. Bill Stewart. Bill Stewart. And the drummer, I actually, I mean, the bassist I don't know. Look at her technique. I love her technique. It's so correct, but so swinging, too. Steve Nelson, one of the great box players. Who's on bass?

I don't know. I'm going to mess up the video if I'll go look, but I'll look real quick. Orlando Laflamic. Oh, Orlando, yeah. Let's get ahead, Peter. Not that we don't want to hear Steve, but this is a pianist list. I know, I know, I'm going to jump ahead. I hate to eat it. Steve Nelson, unbelievable. Oops, sorry, sorry, sorry.

Let's give you a little bit of flavor. Phrasing. The phrasing is excellent. It's like as good as modern straight ahead can get, you know. Great stuff. We'll have links to all these in the description below. Man, so you can go on a deep. Yeah, and we apologize for cutting all the stuff off, but we're, you know,

We're trying to get through this list here. You know what I'm saying? This is a little sampler packet. A little sampler packet. So next up, I'll take the next one here. Yes, sir. This is really unknown. A lot of people aren't going to know who this is.

Under the radar. Under the radar. And, you know, you're welcome for us introducing him to you for the first time. And this is, I don't even know how to pronounce his name. It's, I think it's Yon. I think it's a soft, Jay. It's a soft. You're nothing.

You're nothing. Be do. Betiste? Jan Betiste. Anyway, Jan Betiste. That was a long-winded pun there. Look at this dude with a cape. We're in a cape.

This is from the Grammy Awards, by the way. Ever heard of him? In which he won like a billion. He sure does have a cape on, doesn't he? He's wearing a cape. When you win 11 Grammys, you can wear a cape too. Count Battiste. Some New Orleans left hand right there.

Cap's coming off. It's because the show's starting. So, I mean, he's become, I think, our generation, Peter, not our generation, but this next generation's, you know, version of the jazz pop star, the Harry Connick, you know. Right. The person who can really play, who can make great music, but then also make it commercially palatable to the masses in which he did this year. And I don't know, I don't even know him, you know, like I've met him once, I think. I know you know him really well, but I feel so proud of him because he's one of us. You know, like he can play changes and he's on the Grammy's like singing a dance. It's amazing.

Yeah, and I don't know him well, but I've known him like. I mean, actually, I feel like this is a little bit of a self-serving list because two of these guys I taught a little bit when they were young. Sullivan and Jonathan. So that's kind of my main. Shaping the minds of the future. Well, no, not at all. These both of them were already so far along when they came to me. I just, I didn't, I can't even say I put the icing on. I just, I'm like with Sullivan, I just, I gave him a Herbie Hancock. CD, you know, Maiden Voyage and was like, check this out because he never heard Herbie. And then he did all the work to learn that stuff. But him and Jonathan both were phenoms as high schoolers and their folks brought them to me and were kind of like, you know, do something. For me, it's just so fun to be able to have been to see where they came from. But where they came from was such a high level. It's not like, but just to see them over time and stuff has been really great. All right. You left for a second. Where'd you go?

I want to put you back in focus. Okay, thank you. You know what? I do better when I'm out of focus. I'm a more, I'm a more amenable image in unfocused land, but it's all good. Okay, who do we have next year? Oh, okay, this one, I think I'm going to take this one. This is Christian Sans ever heard of him.

I got a little confused because I'm seeing Christian McBride, but we're going to listen to the Christian McBride Trio. I know. I love this. Play fried pie fried pies. And Christian Sands, another great young pianist, millennial, not that young, but whatever. Middle age? Are they middle age? Yes. They are not middle age. But he's got a bunch of great stuff on his own. Check that out. But I wanted to play this because it's just, I loved hearing this trio.

This is when I first kind of got to know him when he was playing the Christian McBride trio with Ulysses Owens on drums, front of the pod, front of the open studio on Christian McBride, OS artist. So let's check out fried pies. I love this video. I've watched it like a thousand times. That's how I've got 1.3 million views. That hat looks familiar. I feel like Christopher McBride's hat made it into a few open studio videos. Oh, you-O on the drums. Yeah. There's some precision going on there.

This was such a swinging band. So you can check this whole thing out. This was from live at this. I actually did some recording there. It's really cool. The piano is better than it looks as an upright. It's kind of fun to play in the studio there in Seattle at the station. But great thing about Christian Sands is he's probably like, out of all these pianists,

in some ways, the most traditional old school. like bang right on top of the beat but he's the most millennial dressing in terms of his style perhaps well maybe not more than Jeff I don't know I was going to say bad but it's just a great kind of juxtaposition I'm still watching my thing

Ulysses Owen certainly would be on our list of greatest millennial jazz drummers as well but that's sort of a side note so I'm Christian Sands I've got another one for you and this is one of my favorite pianist and friend of open studio he's done everybody's our friend man I know you know I know

we're blessed with some riches here. But Glenn Zaleski. Oh, yeah. Well known Glenn Zaleski. He wrote a blog post for us. It was amazing. But he also has his own YouTube channel with great performances and great tutorials.

Go check that out. Yeah, what are we going to check out? We're going to check out. So this isn't the most produced video that Glenn's ever done, but it's the first thing. Someone sent this to me. It's from 2015.

Someone sent this to me, I think, in 2015. Okay. Of just him in a practice room at a music school. playing con Alma the dizzy Gillespie tune check this out unlike what is that

a cassio clavanova clavinella look at that inner voice much look at the inner I mean he's like a young Fred Hirsch

or Brad Malbauer or something it's so effortless it's so beautiful that's not us that's so sick and he's just like casually in a practice room being Glenn Zalesc

would you say that's who Worthy? I also got another video that was truly, I think, a personal video from our friend Peter Schlam, pianist and vibes player out of Kansas City. They were on the road. Okay. And they had like a little casetone or something in the van.

Casanova. And just Glenn just shredding on the little caps. Are you being sharing that or just telling us about it? I couldn't find it. Okay. No, Glenn Zeleski, he's got a couple of great albums recently out and a solo piano one that I think everybody should check out because he does have. have a really unique, beautiful voice on the instrument.

And then of course, like, go subscribe to his YouTube channel. If you like what we do, you'll really like what he does as well. Yes, absolutely. Okay, that was seven, but we're going, we're going to go to eight because we had trouble. And our apologies for those. We could have done 20. Yeah, apologies for folks that we forgot or missed or aren't hip to. Please let us know in the comments below.

If you're listening on the pod, go to our YouTube channel. I mean, there are some in my mind right now I want to say, but I don't want to. Oh, because you're remembering, you screwed up. I was, those are the people I was saying we should have done. Just saying. Don't blame me. Okay. But no, go to the YouTube channel, even if you're listening to this.

And please comment, because we want to know about other millennial pianists, jazz pianists that we miss. Born from 1981 to 96. No. You're messing up now. See? What do you mean? No, yes, you are correct. 81 to 96.

You haven't got the dates right. It's so confusing, man. It's so confusing. Anyway, millennials. Because some of the people we tease about being millennials like you, you were not born during that time. Hence, you are not a millennial. But I'm a Gen X, and I feel like you're another generation for me.

I feel that way, too. Although you're starting to change. You get a little older. Okay, so the last Gen X, Gen X, millennial P. And look, go comment too, because we've got a bunch of these coming up. Tell them about what they're going to be getting on the next episode. So next episode is Gen X. You know, you can imagine who's on that.

We got Robert Glasper, obviously. Hey, don't tell him. I'm not going to tell people of that. People of our generation. Yeah, Glasper is not going to be on there. But I honestly can't. Yeah, Robert Glasper, not. Not on the list.

Of course he's on the list. But you know, I'm looking forward to like the last two, the silent generation because we don't, because none of them, not many of them are still with us. I know. And so I feel like we should. I feel like we should rank them, Peter, because we can't rank. The problem is we had a hard time ranking these folks. We're about to rank them now, aren't we? After we finished this last one?

I know. But we couldn't rank them all because we know them all. I know. That's true. And it's hard. It's hard. Okay. So our last one here, friend of the pod, friend of the open.

studio and this is another uh another guy that I've I've known since he was a teenager so proud of him such a great player this is Emmett Cohen who is uh yeah exactly like it has really been known and respected but I think during the last few years due to his YouTube channel and Facebook and stuff and also jazz cruises he's been a big um guest and proponent and frequent think the jazz cruises is what broke him well I mean it did for a certain generation I mean like yeah because he's been doing that for for like a while and like it really honed like he honed a lot of stuff like i just like you said youtube jazz cruise i know it's a

little bit of the same it's a different demo same level um anyway no just a great player and of course been hosting monday nights live at emmott's place really hitting a stride on the live stream such a good show guests yeah so anyway this is from uh when was this from sometime last year emma cohen and this is one of the big videos and it's just a lot of fun emacone with bruce harris uh patrick bartley some other uh great millennial players this is after you've gone player like sans a lot dressed uh just as very millennial this is just great great young players playing traditional stuff just a slick hip player i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna skip ahead to a little piano so apologies there but you know a mademal quote right out of the bat yeah so great playing there's so much

great stuff of em it's available online he's got some fantastic albums and you know go check about enjoy this was so much fun this was good i think this is a solid list now we're gonna screw it up by trying to add some rankings. I think we should rank our top three. Okay. Our top three from all eight, right? Well, let's quick come up with a graphic to do such that. Would you like to go first? I would like me to go first? My top three is number three is, is, I'm not a fan. I'm not, hold on. Actually, the miles is more appropriate. We can just tell, we don't need the graphic. Oh, there it is. So my, here's my top three. Okay. What a weird way to put it.

Three, two, one. Well, it was going to be a graphic that actually was an animation. It's fine. We know what I care's about that. I know. So, yeah. So, oh, look at that. It gets cropped right away.

So three, I'm going to put Jay Bat. Jonathan Batiste is three. Two, I'm going to put Aaron Parks. Okay. And my number one is Sullivan Fortner. That's a solid, that's a solid ranking. Just from, and I'm going by like what I've listened to most frequently. Okay.

So we talk about the people that are not on your list. No, we should only talk about the ones that are on. your list. Yes. Okay. Now that's a solid one. Those are all, look, you can't go wrong with this list, but I can't argue with that. For mine to argue a little bit. Okay. And change it up. I don't remember what mine was. Could you put it up, please, Caleb? And then I'll remember. Oh. So you have a tie. That's right. You couldn't do three. I couldn't do three. So three. Here's the problem because Peter knows all these people. I know. I didn't want to. No, you know, I'm, I mean, look, I, you know what it was. For me, this was based upon also some of them I've heard more. I've

been around more. You know what I mean? So three is like Emma Cohen and Christian Sands. I just not even that they're similar but I kind of like I love them both and they're kind of coming from the same place in a way. Sullivan and Jonathan and Jonathan, they're creeping around here too. Jonathan and Sullivan, as I said, I've known since they were teenagers. I'm so proud of them. I love them so much as human beings as much as I know their families. Just not quite proud of Jonathan as much as I didn't mean. No, I mean. Well, you know what it is if look, if we're going to say the top millennial entertainers, Jonathan would be at the top of list and he's no sleaze as a jazz pianist.

Yeah. But Sullivan is just, you know, I mean, you can interchange any of these four. Honestly, all eight of the people that we chose today are incredible. This is, it's so stupid to rank. Why were you so insisting we did it with the graphics and everything? We might not ever do this again. It actually really is dumb. We're going to be like, Herbie Hancock 2, Chickoria 3, but a tie with Art Tatum.

It's assinine to even attempt it. Take it off, Caleb. I'm embarrassed by seeing that. It is embarrassing. So we're not going to do that again because it is, it is silly, right? Because there's something about Jonathan Batisse that's really special. Are we going to edit this out? No, we're not.

We're not. We're not. We'll leave it in. Sloppy. We don't mind. We don't mind. But don't expect to see that for the Gen X one, which is coming up next. Oh, no.

Hell no. It'll be like, number one, Adam Manis. Number two, Peter Martin. No, let's flip them, right? Yeah. No, we're not doing that again. But, man, what a list. I mean, what a great list.

A list. Yeah, put in in the comments what we missed. I know, I mean, I'm going to be the first one in the comments to write some people on. And you know what? Put your top three, because that's fine for in the comments. It's not as didactic as what we're doing. It is fun, though. You've ever done those in movies?

It is kind of fun to have a top five where you just, you know, you put in, it forces you to like really pick someone. I think it'll be easier for the older musicians. Top jazz album of all time. Top jazz album of all time. Like a person. Whoa. Ask me.

Top jazz. I have the whole time. Herbie Hancock, Secrets. Oh! You'll hear it.