Noah Haidu Celebrates Jarrett’s Standards Trio

Jazz pianist Noah Haidu (photograph by Chris Drukker)

This Friday Sunnyside Records will release its latest album of jazz pianist Noah Haidu. I first became aware of Haidu about two and a half years ago when Sunnyside released his SLOWLY: Song for Keith Jarrett album. The title of his new album is Standards; and it is another tribute to Jarrett, this time the 40th anniversary of the release that launched his Standards Trio with Jack DeJohnette on drums and Gary Peacock on bass. As is usually the case, Standards is currently available for pre-order on an Amazon.com Web page.

To be fair, Standards is not, strictly speaking, a trio album. Lewis Nash plays drums on ten of the eleven tracks. However, there are two bass players, Buster Williams for the first four of those tracks and Peter Washington for the remaining six. However, for four of those tracks the trio becomes a quartet with the addition of saxophonist Steve Wilson. (He was mistakenly identified as a drummer on the back cover of my copy of the release. Since the Amazon.com Web page does not include an image of that back cover, I do not know whether that error has been rectified.) Since this paragraph has only accounted for ten tracks, I have to conclude by observing that one of the tracks, Hoagy Carmichael’s “Skylark,” was given a solo performance by Haidu.

Taken as a whole, the album definitely stands up to attentive listening. The tunes range from the “traditional” Carmichael track to Wayne Shorter’s “Ana Maria.” In addition, the last two tracks are Haidu originals, “Last Dance I” and “Last Dance II.”

The performances are consistently well-polished. One might even say that it is the sheen of that polish that reflects on Haidu’s interest in Jarrett, because it would be fair to say that many (most?) of the standards that appeal to Haidu do not necessarily find their own onto Jarrett tracks. Where the very idea of playing standards is concerned, I doubt that Haidu’s album will lure me away from Jarrett’s trio; but there is still much to appeal to the attentive listener on this new Standards album.