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Larry Willis

Pianist Larry Willis has had an important and distinguished 40-year career in jazz. Since making his recording debut on Jackie McLean’s landmark 1965 album “Right Now!,” the New York-born Willis has played everything from free jazz to fusion to rock while performing as a valued sideman with such jazz titans as Dizzy Gillespie, Lee Morgan, Cannonball Adderley, Art Blakey and Woody Shaw.

Larry was born in 1942 in Manhattan’s Harlem. Surprisingly, he entered music not as a pianist but as a voice major, first at New York’s High School of Music and Art for gifted students, then at the Manhattan School of Music. His senior year in high school, at 17, he had his first recording date, a classical gig with the Music and Arts Choral Ensemble singing a Copland opera conducted by no less then Leonard Bernstein.

But something even more important than that happened to Larry at the beginning of that senior year. He started playing the piano no lessons, no teacher, just figuring it out by himself. By the end of the winter, he was playing his first professional gigs in a jazz trio with two of his classmates, Al Foster on drums and Eddie Gomez on bass. No one knew it then, but that little trio was probably the most distinguished high school jazz group in the country.

Soon after entering the Manhattan School of Music, Larry switched from voice to music theory. For one, he was running head-on into the all-too-evident barriers facing black musicians in the classical world.

On the positive side, Larry’s interest in jazz was turning into passion. A fellow student, Hugh Masakela, heard him jamming with Al Foster. Hugh was so impressed that he hooked Larry up with John Mehegan, the legendary New York jazz piano teacher. Those were Larry’s first-ever lessons. By the end of that year at the Manhattan School, at age 19, Larry was playing regularly with Jackie McLean, the great alto saxophone innovator.

This is a remarkable entry into jazz: a kid of 17 decides to play the piano for the first time; four months later, he’s playing gigs with a soon-to-be world class trio. A year and a half after that, he’s making jazz history with the next giant of the alto after Bird. A year after Larry’s graduation in 1965, Jackie gave him his first recording date “Right Now,” on Blue Note and on that first date recorded the first two pieces in a continuing stream of Willis compositions.

Since then, Larry has played on more than 300 records. He’s played or recorded with almost every great jazz musician of the modern era, stars like Dizzy Gillespie, Lee Morgan, Woody Shaw, Hugh Masakela, Cannonball and Nat Adderley, Stan Getz, Art Blakey, Art Taylor, Clifford Jordan, Carmen McRae, and Shirley Horn. Recent CDs include a Larry Willis Quintet and four Larry Willis Trio recordings plus two solo sessions (labels are Audioquest, Steeplechase, Evidence and Mapleshade).

Larry’s extraordinary versatility as a pianist ranges from rock and pop�"he spent 7 years as keyboardist for Blood, Sweat and Tears to African, Brazilian and Afro- Cuban music. He’s one of the only non-Hispanic players who ever impressed Mario Bauza as a Latin pianist.

Another facet of Larry’s genius is his composing and arranging for orchestras and big bands. He’s always had a very special gift for arranging strings, strings that form a gorgeous, open framework for jazz improvisation. His first major string works were symphonic arrangements for a Brooklyn Symphony concert with the Fort Apache Band in 1994. Since then he’s done gem-like string quartet and quintet arrangements for three Mapleshade jazz CDs: John Hicks “Trio Plus Strings,” Sunny Sumter’s “Sunny,” and Monica Worth’s “Never Let Me Go.” Recently, he wrote larger scale arrangements for albums by Roy Hargrove, Vanessa Rubin and Joe Ford, among others. Larry composed an orchestral suite in four movements for the Florida Southern College Symphony Orchestra and then performed it in concert. He was also featured soloist with an Italian chamber orchestra, performing his own compositions.

Larry Willis is a three-time Grammy nominee with Fort Apache as well as pianist on two of their New York Jazz Critics Award-winning CDs. He’s was also on Roy Hargrove’s Grammy-winning “Crisol Band” CD and toured for three years with Roy. Currently, he is touring actively with his own Trio and Quintet as well as with Fort Apache from time to time.

Larry Willis released in 2007 his tribute to his mentor Jackie Mclean “Blue Fable,” on the HighNote label. With his high school buddy Eddie Gomez on bass, his quintet plays a set of post-bop standards and some original compositions, including an exuberant version of Thelonious Monk's "Rhythm-A-Ning," an introspective performance of Miles Davis's "Nardis," Jackie McLeans’s “Blue Fable,” (title cut) and his own "Prayer for New Orleans."

His most recent release is "The Offering." again on HighNote. This record is reviewed here at all about jazz by John Barron.
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Roy Hargrove's Crisol: Grande-Terre

Read "Grande-Terre" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
October 21, 2024

Increasingly and with growing momentum, right up until he died at the young age of 55 in 2018, Roy Hargrove was a standard bearer for a new kind of African American jazz. The recipe embraced a variety of styles--jazz, Afro-Cuban music, funk, hip hop and soul--and it influenced a generation of musicians in jazz and beyond. But Hargrove never abandoned jazz, the foundation stone of his style. Instead he regarded other genres as part of a rainbow ...

Album Review

Larry Willis: I Fall in Love Too Easily

Read "I Fall in Love Too Easily" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
July 20, 2020

I Fall in Love Too Easily is subtitled “The Final Session at Rudy Van Gelder's," as it is not only descriptively but literally the last recording session by veteran pianist Larry Willis, who died at age seventy-six in September 2019, one year after the album was completed at the renowned Van Gelder studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. The occasion also represented a homecoming of sorts for Willis who launched his six-decades-long career at that same studio in 1965, cutting ...

Radio & Podcasts

Larry Willis + Tomeka Reid, Ghost Horse, Matana Roberts & Other New Releases

by Ludovico Granvassu
November 5, 2019

This week we remember pianist Larry Willis (1942—2019) who passed away in September, followed by the perusal of a pile of exciting new releases and re-relases building jazz bridges between North America and Europe, featuring Midnight Lilacs (i.e. Chris Speed, Marc Ribot, Danilo Gallo and Zeno De Rossi), Ethan Iverson Quartet with Tom Harrell, Simone Graziano, Tomeka Reid, Ghost Horse, Matana Roberts, Alban Darche and more. Happy listening! Ben Allison “Mondo Jazz Theme (feat. ...

912

Interview

Larry Willis: Reaching and Teaching

by Russ Musto
May 1, 2010

In a career spanning five decades, Larry Willis has amassed one the most impressive resumes in jazz, including tenures with Jackie McLean, Hugh Masekela, Joe Henderson, Woody Shaw, Stan Getz, Carla Bley, Roy Hargrove, Jimmy Cobb's So What Sextet and Jerry Gonzalez and the Fort Apache Band, testifying to the high esteem in which he is held by his peers. Yet despite a substantial discography including scores of sideman appearances and over twenty dates as a leader, the gifted pianist/composer ...

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Multiple Reviews

Larry Willis: The Offering, Excursions & Expose

by Francis Lo Kee
January 10, 2009

Larry Willis The Offering HighNote 2008 Paul Murphy/Larry Willis Excursions Wicked Chops 2008 Paul Murphy/Larry Willis Expose Murphy 2008

Pianist Larry Willis leads a full, interesting musical life. From these two projects that span three CDs we hear Willis the rock solid post-bop ...

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Album Review

Larry Willis: The Offering

Read "The Offering" reviewed by John Barron

by John Barron
April 27, 2008

New York native Larry Willis has had a distinguished career performing with artists as diverse as Jackie McLean, Blood, Sweat & Tears and Woody Shaw. Although he's not nearly as well known as he should be, the veteran pianist has established himself in the upper echelon of modern jazz recording artists. The Offering finds Willis in the all-star company of bassist Eddie Gomez, drummer Billy Drummond and, for three tunes, saxophonist Eric Alexander.

The six-note ostinato bass line on the ...

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Multiple Reviews

Larry Willis: Blue Fable and Alter Ego

by Donald Elfman
October 6, 2007

Larry Willis Blue Fable High Note 2007 Tony Pancella Alter Ego Mapleshade 2007

Larry Willis is one of those musicians whose name should always be remembered when the subject of terrific and, alas, sometimes forgotten pianists comes up. He has been on the scene for over 40 years -- from his ...

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