WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 27 SEATTLE DRUM SCHOOL L.A.B., 7:30pm
Improvisation Clinic with Dave Peck
Seattle Drum School L.A.B., 12510 15th Ave NE, Seattle, WA
Free and open to the public

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29 CHAPEL PERFORMANCE SPACE, 8PM
Dave Peck, solo
$12 general, $10 members/seniors, $6 students  BUY NOW

Dave Peck’s rich, melancholic music is one of the great pleasures of Seattle jazz, and how welcome the pianist’s intensified recording and performing schedule is. Still in the afterglow of the June release of Peck’s lovely Modern Romance, Peck here performs in the intimate Chapel Performance Space in celebration of his new solo album, Songbook Volume 1.

Though his primary interest may be in the continued development of the piano trio – and his trio with Joe LaBarbera and Jeff Johnson is wonderful indeed – Peck at times sounds most like a solo performer at heart. In his trio recordings Peck’s deeply personal language comes to the forefront in the long, dramatic solo improvisations that introduce many of the group performances. Performing solo, Peck unfolds emotion at a perfect pace, developing sparkling, bittersweet ideas with the utmost care.

Coda Magazine has called Peck “introspective and astute [...] lush and deeply attentive [...] warm, adept and perfectly subtle with enormous craft,” while DownBeat observed his playing as “lyrical and pastel, swinging and bluesy, with a ringing crystalline touch.” And of his last solo recording, “Jazz After Hours”host Jim Wilke commented simply that “Peck’s playing is the perfect balance of intellect and emotion, and that makes for the highest kind of art.”

On Wednesday, October 27 Peck presents a clinic on jazz improvisation for melodic instruments at the Seattle Drum School L.A.B., 12510 15th Ave NE, Seattle. The free clinic is open to musicians and fans alike, and will discuss the use of musical vocabulary in jazz improvisation, visualization as a learning technique for acquiring vocabulary and muscle memory, and theme and development in improvisation.

-Peter Walton