Fully Loaded, Anything-but Standards

Earlier this month, pianist Jacky Terrasson’s trio was at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, making something entirely different of the old standard “Love for Sale.” The song didn’t even resemble itself.

It started with upright-bass player Ugonna Okegwo striking the ascending line from Herbie Hancock’s jazz-funk opus “Chameleon” while Terrasson stood and plucked the rhythmic accompaniment from inside the box of his piano.

Then Terrasson settled back on his bench and began developing the “Love for Sale” theme against Okegwo and drummer Ali Jackson’s “Chameleon” riff. Then Terrasson began turning “Love for Sale” completely inside out, with wide swings in volume and emotion. After a sweeping crescendo, the band settled back into the initial groove and quietly drew the number to a close.

Other tunes were given similar treatment. Thelonious Monk’s “Blue Monk” was transformed into “Autumn Leaves”; “I Love You for Sentimental Reasons” was given a samba beat.

“That all just kind of happens spontaneously,” Terrasson said shortly after the Glendale gig, on the phone from his new home in San Francisco. “We were just trying some stuff, just making some kind of communication that took us in a different direction. It works pretty well.

“Standards have been played so many times,” continued Terrasson, who plays the Founders Hall jazz club at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Friday and Saturday nights. “I just try to do something different with them, especially when they have a strong melody. Then I really like to mess with them. There’s a lot of choice when you play such tunes, a lot of different doors you can go through. I like to try them all.”

The pianist, who turned 30 on Wednesday, found fame rather quickly after winning the Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition in 1993. Before that, he’d moved around a bunch, paying dues in Europe and the U.S.

Born in Berlin and raised in Paris, he started classical piano lessons at age 5 and got into jazz while a high school student at the Paris Lycee Lamartine. He enrolled at the Berklee School of Music in Boston in 1986 but left after two semesters to play five nights a week at Blondie’s on Rush Street in Chicago.

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He returned to Paris in 1987 and spent a year in the army (“a waste of time”), then started gigging around the City of Light with singer Dee Dee Bridgewater.

After touring the continent with bassist Ray Brown, Terrasson started getting a lot of advice: “All the musicians who were passing through Paris said, ‘You’ve got to go to New York.’ Dee Dee was telling me to go to New York. I’d had a taste of Boston and Chicago, and I knew that New York was where all the players were, both young and old.”

He made the move in 1990 and immediately hooked up with saxophonist Antoine Roney, brother of trumpeter Wallace Roney. Soon Terrasson was playing in drummer Arthur Taylor’s ensemble (he can be heard on Taylor’s Verve recording “Wailin’ at the Vanguard”) and with drummer Cindy Blackman’s combo.

But even though he’d been absorbed quickly into the jazz community, he found the economics of being a sideman difficult. “I was just trying to survive. I would go back to Paris every three months or so and tour or make a record, just to get some money. Then I’d go back to New York.”

His Monk victory in ‘93, when the competition included such promising players as Edward Simon (seen in Founders Hall earlier this month with Terence Blanchard’s quartet) and Peter Martin, turned Terrasson into a hot commodity. All but a few of the major jazz labels tried the sign him (he went with Blue Note).

He could have gone out with his own trio at that point, but before the competition he’d made an agreement to tour with Betty Carter--which further increased his visibility. Plus, he noted, “I learned a ton of stuff from her.”

Since 1994, he has pretty much led his own trio, breaking away occasionally (as he did earlier this year when he was reunited with Bridgewater for a brief tour). His two albums for Blue Note have earned accolades for their inventive improvisations and wide open treatment of standard material.

Though he likes to startle with dynamic sonic swings, Terrasson frequently plays at low volumes, enticing the listener into his world with playful understatement. “I like playing soft. I like the diversity. I like the music to go all kinds of ways. Sometimes I don’t want to scream. I want to whisper.”

* Jacky Terrasson, bassist Tony Dumas and drummer Ali Jackson play the jazz club at Founders Hall in the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 and 9:45 p.m. $30. (714) 740-7878.