TT 536: Hal Galper

a few memories of the late pianist

Pianist Hal Galper has passed at 87.

Galper played on great records with Sam Rivers and Cannonball Adderley before holding it down with Phil Woods; he eventually acquired a reputation as a revered teacher, even a guru.

His many albums as a leader explored different styles; from the current vantage point, the Hal Galper quintet with Randy and Michael Brecker has become something of a touchstone of ‘70s jazz. (Billy Hart discusses that band briefly in his new book Oceans of Time.)

---

In recent years Galper was quite active on Facebook, telling stories of his personal development and interactions with bonafide legends. As far as I know, there is no Galper memoir, which is too bad. Someone should make an eBook of Galper’s FB musings.

---

In 1991 I had a memorable week with Hal as both my combo teacher and my piano teacher at the Jamey Aebersold workshop in Elmhurst, Illinois. This was right before I went off to college that fall.

The two really top-flight professional pianists I spent time with in my teens were Hal Galper and Jim McNeely. McNeely I would know much better, and would be the bigger influence. (I studied with Jim for two years at NYU.) But the week with Hal was also incredibly valuable.

While I was never a good drummer, I had been playing drums in the Menomonie high school big band all year including concerts and competitions. I would be my fourth and last time at Aebersold, and for some reason I decided to go as a drummer. I auditioned like anyone else and was placed in Galper’s student ensemble by the camp authorities—but then I attended the piano workshop with Hal every day (not the drum workshop). Through this act of double-dipping I spent a lot of hours with Hal in that short period. I guess I was 17 and he was 53. He loved to talk, and I listened like my life depended on it.

All these memories came flooding back to me yesterday when I heard about Hal Galper passing…

Hal: “I played like McCoy Tyner for a long time because that style was popular, but then I reverted to my early love of Tommy Flanagan, Wynton Kelly, and, especially, Ahmad Jamal.” This was helpful to hear. Artists have periods and make choices about what to do and what not to do. (After I got home, I bought some Galper records, and sure enough, the 70’s band with the Brecker Brothers was all pentatonic power, while the 80’s trio records on Concord were straight-ahead.) At the camp he was playing his later way, except once on “Summertime” with students at a jam session (I was on drums) where he played a Tyner-ish pentatonic solo. I asked him about it after—with a frown—and he embarrassedly replied, “I just wanted to see if I could still do it.”

Hal: “I was looking forward to playing with Philly Joe Jones, expecting him to swing me. But then he was really chilly on the bandstand. I was totally unswinging with Philly Joe Jones. I needed to learn to swing on my own first. A great drummer can’t help you.” I have gone on to learn this lesson many times, but I was more ready for this kind of disappointment thanks to Hal.

Hal: “I love Ahmad Jamal. I collect all his records and see what he does different on the same tunes over the years.” Although I was already headed in the direction of acquiring a vast collection, this comment encouraged me to keep cataloging the differences in the output of my heroes.

Hal: “I read through all these new Bill Evans transcription books and play the voicings through all twelve keys.” Right. I started doing stuff like this too. Reading music is just incredibly helpful all the way around. Transposition eventually became a cornerstone of my personal practice.

Hal: “I played a gig with a former student. He can play changes, but he still isn’t playing jazz.” At first I didn’t accept this. Jazz is improvising, right? Play anything on the changes, and if they are the changes, then it is jazz. Right? But today I would lean more towards Hal’s view, meaning that “real” jazz is less purely improvised and more like a specific language.

Hal seemed to like me. One day he drove me around in his car, running errands and telling me stories, and then he even let me write a piece for the final combo performance. I submitted a kind of a Ornette Coleman/Carla Bley-type thing with meter changes and a light backbeat in the drums. (I seem to remember barely playing any cymbals, it was more of an Ed Blackwell tribute, with a tom part and a snare hit on “four.”) The solos were free; in rehearsal Hal himself offered chaotic ‘60s-era moves (like strumming inside the piano) that he had once done with Sam Rivers. I don’t think any other teachers let their students play originals or had any free playing, so we really stood out from the other performances at the end of the week. In a modest way, we were a hit, and afterwards Hal credited me for turning his little student band into “The Hal Galper Experience.” This is a really nice memory! I had totally forgotten it until yesterday.

---

Some of the later Galper trios featured drummer Steve Ellington. Ellington was a genuinely mysterious musician, heard only a few places in the discography, perhaps most notably on LPs by Hampton Hawes, Sam Rivers, Art Farmer, and Dave Holland. Somewhere in the ‘90s I ran into Hal again and said something to this effect, and Hal immediately said, “If my trio is distinctive, it is because Steve Ellington is so distinctive.”

One track from Tippin’ with Galper, Ellington, and Wayne Dockery is on YouTube. It’s got a nice vibe, perhaps like an updated Ahmad Jamal concept with more interactive ensemble blowing. 1992.