NYC-based, award-winning jazz organist heads to Ann Arbor, downtown Detroit this week
The splashy swing of a classic organ trio can generate some of the most deeply soulful experiences in the genre of jazz.
Award-winning, New York-based organist Brian Charette is bringing that electricity to Ann Arbor and downtown Detroit this week; Thursday, Oct. 17, his trio will play A2's Blue Llama Jazz Club, then spend the weekend holding down a residency for six performances at Detroit's historic Cliff Bell's.
"We have a bunch of stuff we play," said Charette. "Organ classics, but rare ones, like we play some Stanley Turrentine/Shirley Scott stuff, some stuff from Lonnie Smith. My favorite organist is Jack McDuff. I have an album coming out December 6, in tribute to him, called 'You Don't Know Jack,' on the Cellar Live label. Cellar also just released a new, live album of unreleased material (2023's 'Live at Deanna's').
"I wrote some other tunes in the style of Jack McDuff. I learned to play organ in Harlem on his organ, so he's very important to me. We also play a little bit of electronica – it's subtle, but it's in there a little bit. We're playing with (guitarist) Ralph Tope, who's based in Detroit. (They're joined by drummer Jordan Young.) We also play some of my tunes from my other albums, and we'll mix in some of these funky organ standards."
Charette recalled his entrée into music at a very young age.
"My mother plays the piano very well," he said. "She's still with us, fortunately. When I was a child of around four years old, I would just walk down to the piano and play it all day. When I was about six, my mother started to teach me how to play the piano. I started with John W. Schaum instructional books, which is what kids did in those days. When I turned seven, I started to study piano with a gentleman named George, who had very long nose hair and was very strict, but was a very good piano teacher.
"And I started to work in music pretty young. When I was 15, I was playing lots of gigs. By the time I was 17, I was playing with jazz guys like Lou Donaldson, Houston Person, Matt 'Guitar' Murphy from The Blues Brothers. So I was very much working like I am now; I was basically 50 years old when I was 17!"
Constantly working indeed, Charette has two to three more albums due out in 2025, including a solo piano record and a solo organ project.
But for now, he's looking forward to playing Michigan.
"Detroit is our home base whenever we come through the Midwest," he said. "We love The D! We've been coming there for 10 or 12 years now. We hang at all the places – Baker's, I know all the guys there. Jordan's family lives in Bloomfield Hills. We've been to Blue Llama before, we've played in Cliff Bell's many times. But we've never had three nights there before! We're excited."
The Brian Charette Trio will play Ann Arbor's Blue Llama Jazz Club at 7 and 8:45 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 17. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased at bluellamaclub.com .
Friday and Saturday, Oct. 18 and 19, they'll play Detroit's Cliff Bell's at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 20, they'll play Cliff Bell's at 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets for those performances are $25 and can be purchased at cliffbells.com .
Contact Free Press arts and culture reporter Duante Beddingfield at
