by Kevin Laskey

From his work with the likes of Norah Jones and Joshua Redman among others, pianist/organist Sam Yahel holds a continuing place of influence for young jazz musicians. Just a cursory browse through YouTube finds student performances of his compositions like “Oumare” and performed transcriptions of his solos on standards.

As a leader, it’s been a decade since Yahel’s last release From Sun to Sun, but thankfully the wait for a followup isn’t much longer. This week, Yahel will go into the studio with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Brian Blade to record a new album, and to get ready, the trio will play two sets at The jazz Gallery this Tuesday, August 1.

We at Jazz Speaks caught up with Yahel via Zoom to talk about playing with Grenadier and Blade, shaping sound on the B3 organ, and connecting with listeners in real time.

The Jazz Gallery: The last time you played at the Gallery was January 2020 with Massimo Biolcati in 2020. What about the last time you played as a bandleader?

Sam Yahel: I don’t I’ve every played here as a leader, actually. It’s not a place I’ve played a lot over the years, just here and there. It’s always been with really interesting projects, new things the leader is trying out.

TJG: That’s interesting! You played a lot at the original Smalls, and some of those regulars like Jason Lindner ended up doing a lot at the Gallery after Smalls closed. It’s interesting how communities can shift in unpredictable ways.

SY: Yeah.

TJG: So with this being your first time as a leader, you’re bringing some great company in Larry and Brian. Is this a band that you’re hoping to play with more regularly, or is it a fortuitous coincidence that you’re all in town and can play together?

SY: It’s interesting because I’ve played with Brian a lot, but I haven’t played with Larry more than maybe 2 or 3 times. We run in similar circles and definitely know each other. I’ve always been a fan of his and he knows my music too to a certain degree. In a way, this feels like the reunion of a band that never was, which I love.

I’ve been waiting to do something with this band for years, and specifically in terms of how this relates to my playing B3. For a long time, I felt that playing B3 and piano were really compartmentalized, a whole separate world. Part of the challenge I going for is how to merge the two, or make music in this more open world. Having a bass player forces me to give up control, because when I’m playing in a typical organ trio, I’m playing bass, and I’m part of the low end of the rhythm section. By letting go of that, it opens up what I can do in a certain way, but also entails me letting go of some control. It’s exciting and a little scary.

I’ve always thought working with Larry would be great for something like this, and I feel we’ve talked about it for like 15 years. And he’s always been “Let’s do it,” so finally, we’re going into the studio in Woodstock after the gig to make a record. Of course I’d love to do more with this and have a tour, but I’m trying to take it one step at a time. Let’s get to the rehearsal, let’s do the gig, let’s make the record. Larry and Brian are two of the busiest guys in show business and rightfully so, so who knows what the future will bring. But I don’t see why not—it could be the start of something.

TJG: It’s interesting hearing you talk about how having a bass player changes the dynamic of what material you play on the organ. How does it impact the way you shape your sound too? B3 can have such a rich and complex sound, so how do you find sounds that allow Larry to speak?

SY: That’s part of the challenge. Because the organ is so warm and deep, if I play the way that I normally do, I’m going to be in direct conflict with the bass player. So in many cases, I take the low mid to bottom frequencies almost completely out. After that, what am I left with? I know about this intellectually, but in the moment, I tend to find the sound in an intuitive way. I can hear and feel if it’s not working, or the full music isn’t speaking. With the B3 normally, I feel that you’re 75% organ player and 25% sound man. If the band sound isn’t clicking, you just start making these adjustments with all the knobs and sliders. Doing that on the organ is not that different from an EQ, since everything is set out by the harmonic overtone series. You can really shape how much you’re adding in and taking out of any given harmonic. The process of adjusting my sound in the moment is a big part of my musicianship. When I play with a bass player, I know my normal sound isn’t going to work, and so I’m more attuned to making the necessary adjustment.

Brian thinks on that level also—he’s not just thinking musically but sonically. It’s something that distinguishes him from other drummers in my view. It’s not just thinking about what material he’s playing. Sometimes he’ll go a while without playing a cymbal because maybe on some intuitive level he feels like the overtones are competing with someone else’s overtones.

I don’t know for a fact that Larry thinks on that level, but I assume he is because his sound is always so good. When people have that consistency with their sound, you know they have that thinking because it’s not just plugging into an amp and playing. So I think this a good trio for that very reason.

TJG: I totally hear that in both Larry & Brian’s playing too. I think about Larry playing with Brad Mehldau and his really active left hand and use of the whole instrument, so Larry thinks about navigating with that in terms of register and tone. And then with Brian, I last heard him at the Village Vanguard with Ron Miles, and the way he played there in terms of drum sound and touch is really different than when he’s playing in a bigger hall. It feels like he’s thinking of EQ in a similar way like you.

SY: Yeah. I was on the road with him for a while with Joshua Redman. Sound checks were mostly just the three of us trying to figure out how to pull a sound out of the room that works. It’s a high priority for certain players. Since I was playing the low-end in that group too, it was really easy to overpower the band. The soundcheck was a lot of fine tuning, training my ear to hear what the room does. And then when people come in, everything changes anyway!

But you get so used to listening and changing based on what you’re hearing. One of the big things about being a pro on the road is that you’re going to play a room that’s really boomy, and then one that’s really dry. And then you’re going to play in piazza in Italy where people are sitting 200 feet away from you outdoors. Thinking about sound and blend gets built into your musicianship principles.

It's a bit by hook or by crook. You start to get to know rooms, and figure out what makes a good room. I feel like the Gallery is a nice room—you can really hear everything. The stage is a little bit removed from the audience, but you can trust that the sound on stage is coming across.

TJG: And the room has definitely changed over the years! There was the big soundproofing project, and now the mixing desk is in the way back to get more seats in, and there’s the livestreaming setup. It’s gotten increasingly forgiving, especially for large ensembles.

SY: That’s cool.

TJG: So switching gears a bit, since you’re going into the studio that weekend, do you have a fixed set list of tunes, or are you still feeling things out in terms of what you’ll play at the gig and what will go on the record?

SY: I think it’s going to be mostly original—probably 80% originals. We can play standards and it would be great. But since we’re getting this studio time, it just seems appropriate to be writing music. I’ve been stuff in the last few months with these guys in mind. I have more material than what we can record, so it’ll be a matter of rehearsing with the guys and see what works and what doesn’t work as well.

I’ll probably throw some standards in here and there to break things up. Sometimes I feel that too much original music can be fatiguing for the listener, as much as I love playing it. I do want to challenge the listener on some level, but I’m always conscious of how much I’m asking from them. Especially some people might be there for two sets, and I don’t want to hit them with original after original after original. Standards can help give an arc to a set.

With my originals, I tend to write in cycles. About a year ago, I had a cycle where I was writing for 3, 4 months, and then my last one was for about the past 2 and a half months. We’ll see what sticks and feels good.

TJG: That’s an interesting thought about listener fatigue. I like thinking about how different musical parameters can cause fatigue—too much of the same tempo, too much of the same harmonic language, too much of the same register, too much of the same volume. Do you think about fatigue in that systematic way, or is it more intuitive?

SY: I used to be on the road a lot with a singer, and we would be on the bus for like 8 hours. We would play a game where we would all take turns being in charge of the music with our iPods. We would always try to surprise each other with our playlists. I would think, “here’s this killer Brazilian track I’m sure they’ve never heard.” It would be really groovy and joyful. Then I would be thinking about the next track, and I would put on something like “Blue and Green,” which I know they’re gonna recognize, but it would sound surprising and different after the last one. I kept trying to think ahead a little bit, and it’s the same way when I’m thinking about a set.

If you have a big meal of pasta with meat sauce and then someone brings you a breaded veal chop, you don’t want that, you know? Instead, you’d want something small and fresh. That’s how I like thinking with the set. After the opening song, where would I as a listener want to go next? Over the years as a leader, this is a skill I’ve tried to develop. Sometimes it works well, and sometimes it doesn’t. You can’t control everything, you can’t control people’s listening experience. But you can try to do things that statistically are more likely to lead to a better experience.

Let’s say you have this epic song that starts off very soft with mallets, then rises over like 15 minutes and reaches some incredibly high climax. So after an experience like that, what are people going to want to hear? Maybe something really simple and transparent, with thinner sounds. Or something short and joyful. I don’t want to hit people with two songs in a row with this epic scope.

And I think it’s not just a taste thing—this can happen with any kind of music. I might be in the car with my family and wife puts on country music. It’s great and I love it. But then if it’s an hour and a half of that, I can feel like that’s enough.

TJG: Sometimes you can pick up cues from the audience about what they’d be game for. I once saw Wilco in Central Park on a rainy night. I think they got the sense that the people who came out for it were really committed fans and would be game for something different. Instead of coming blazing out of the gate, they played this 12-minute song that’s all super quiet and still and it was completely magical. The whole audience was so in it. I don’t know if they ever opened a concert with that song again. Is that something you pick up on, leading you to change your set list on the fly?

SY: Definitely a little bit. It’s good to have a plan, but I always reserve the right to switch it up, or take something out, put something in. Sometimes it’s fine the way it is. But I might feel something from the audience about how they vibed with a particular tune and make an adjustment to keep everyone in it.

TJG: Some musicians I know can feel icky about doing that, that somehow changing the material to suit the audience is artistically inauthentic.

SY: Yeah—I think they feel like they’re giving up their integrity by doing something that would please the audience. For me, I don’t feel like I’m losing my integrity because it’s still my music. I’m not just going to start playing “When The Saints Go Marching In” and try to get everyone to stand up and clap. I have a world about what I feel good playing, and hopefully have a lot of vibes within that.

Sometimes it can be hard to read an audience. I once did a concert in Japan and the audience was very quiet during the set, but afterward the response was really positive. So sometimes if you don’t get something audible from the audience it doesn’t mean they’re not enjoying it.

On the other side, I feel that there are some musicians who feel that part of their job as artists is to make the audience a bit uncomfortable, to expand their mind, like with music that’s really dissonant. That’s fine, no judgments there.

TJG: But what’s interesting to me is that I’ve found that audiences can get really into super dissonant music if the expressive intention is there. I’ve met a lot of young film scoring students who are super in horror scores that are filled with these intense abstract sounds because they can be so expressive.

SY: I agree. I remember I was in a drummer-led band and all the rhythm was free and weird and melodically untraditional. But the music made sense in a way and I loved it. There was just something about the intention behind it and it had a strong sense of narrative. And of course, different audiences can be more or less generous to unfamiliar music. My impression is that the Gallery is a great place for generous audiences.

The Sam Yahel Trio plays The Jazz Gallery on Tuesday, August 1, 2023. The group features Mr. Yahel on piano & organ, Larry Grenadier on bass, and Brian Blade on drums. Sets are at 7:30 and 9:30 P.M. E.D.T. $30 general admission ($15 for members, FREE for SummerPass holders), $40 reserved cabaret seating ($25 for members), $20 livestream access ($5 for members, FREE for SummerPass holders). Purchase tickets here.