Portland State Magazine Spring 2018

ON A RAINY Tuesday in Lincoln Hall, a group of five students gathers in a rehearsal room for music professor Darrell Grant’s jazz improvisation class. He strides into the room, sits at the piano and announces that they will be taking turns soloing over the chord progression of George Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm.” The trombonist, shy at first, dips her toe in the musical water, playing simple three-note motifs. Then the sax player. Then the guitarist. Another piano player takes a seat next to Grant, soloing over Grant’s chords. Then it’s Grant’s turn to solo, and he burns it up, rattling off complex swinging lines at the same time imploring the students to keep it simple. “Feel what it’s like to play less,” he says. “We’re trying to keep rhythm primary. All that other stuff—noodling— is secondary. Wait until you hear an idea, and then come in.”The energy in the room heats up. It’s like a square dance or a game of hot potato, each player passing off to another. And sure enough, the more the students keep it simple, the better they sound. Grant was already enjoying a thriving career as a jazz musician and composer when he came to PSU 21 years ago, and he maintains that part of his life to this day. He also takes great joy in teaching the next generation of musicians, while using his music beyond the campus as an outlet for social causes and a way of supporting the broader Portland jazz scene. To him, jazz is emotional, visual; an articulation of empathy, of democracy, of fearless self-expression. It’s a calling. journey to this moment started as a child taking classical piano lessons in Denver. He found himself experimenting with jazz before he even understood what jazz was. “I liked improvising—just making stuff up. Then around junior high school I heard jazz on a record, and I thought ‘Oh, that’s a thing? If I did that, I wouldn’t have to practice all this classical music,” he says. He pulls out a record album. “This is me at 15,” he says pointing out the kid with the glasses and afro, part of a Dixieland band he was in in the mid-1970s. The band had a gig every Friday and Saturday at Denver’s Heritage Square Opera House. He made $40 a night while his other school friends were making $2.30 per hour minimum wage. After high school, Grant earned a degree in classical piano at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and a master’s in jazz studies at the University of Miami. Grant was playing eight gigs a week in clubs all over Miami. After graduation, he packed up and moved to New York City, where he devoted himself to playing in jam sessions and getting to know everybody he could in the jazz community. He started a trio, and one of his bandmates got a gig with famous jazz singer Betty Carter and recommended Grant for an opening she had for a lower Manhattan river cruise. She listened to him play at a club, then hired him as her piano player. Grant spent the next 10 years in New York. He had steady engagements with Carter, and worked with other noted jazz performers, including trumpeter and bandleader Woody Shaw. At the same time, he started a new band, composed his own pieces and signed a recording contract with Verve, one of the country’s most prominent jazz labels. In 1994, Grant released Black Art , which The New York Times named one of the 10 best jazz CDs of the year. Two years later, he was a guest on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz , an intimate music and conversation show on National Public Radio on which piano virtuoso McPartland spontaneously invited her guests to play tunes. She would call the titles, and the guest had little or no warning. Grant says it was terrifying, but also a rite of passage that, along with his CD, gave him national exposure. His move to Portland happened almost by accident. Grant and his future wife, Anne McFall, came out to visit friends, including drummer Alan Jones. A bandmate of Jones, who was getting his master’s degree at PSU, mentioned that Andrew Hill, a professor in the PSU jazz program, was thinking of moving on. He asked Grant for a resume and CD, then, unbeknownst to Grant, snuck it into the pile of applications for Hill’s replacement. “I was traveling, and when I got home I saw this letter thanking me for my interest in the job. What job? I wound up getting the gig, and the rest is history.” GRANT’S 11