Jeremy Pelt@The Jazz Bakery
January 10, 2004


"I had to come see this guy live. I can’t take his latest cd off my player," explains trumpet legend Bobby Shew in attendance to hear Jeremy Pelt’s first solo tour. Promoting his critically-acclaimed cd "Close to My Heart", Pelt did not disappoint those who needed see in order to believe. Leading a stellar quartet of LA based musicians, Pelt’s hauntingly beautiful tone rang out clearly in the opening solo of the Mingus ballad "Weird Nightmare". Shifting rhythms in the middle of the song (this is a Mingus song, afterall), the rhythm section of Danny Grissom (piano), Josh Ginsberg (bass) and super session man Willie Jones III snapped and sparked with a crisp latin/funk beat. Pelt’s strong warm tone, with its whispers, chants and gasps, drew sighs off appreciation from the crowd.

Playing cup mute on "It Could Happen To You", Pelt started the piece with a simple duet with the creative Ginsberg, dancing around his bass lines. The sweetness of his tone sparkled as it fluttered and forayed around the deep bass quarter notes. Unobtrusively entering into the conversation, Jones and Grissett turned the piece into a joyous romp, building the music up into a high pitched squeal, only to gently let it flutter and fade to stilling silence. An exhilarating high point of the evening, indeed, only to be matched by the lengthy crystalline solo by Grissett on Jimmy Rowles’ "502 Blues". With Pelt switching to flugelhorn on this piece, his descending cascades sounded like the entire Gil Evans orchestra.

Back on trumpet and closing with the ballad "You won’t forget me" (Ah, only the young have the confidence to close with a ballad!), Pelt held the notes agonizingly long in order to let each drop of pain fall from the bell of the horn. During the closing chorus, one could sense the baton being passed from the trumpet greats (Brownie, Morgan, Hubbard) in the past. This young man took the baton, and took the fans at the Bakery on a hopeful view of jazz’s future.


- George W. Harris