Dahveed Behroozi: Standard Fare
Sunnyside Records

Pianist Dahveed Behroozi had long thought of releasing a solo album, but the idea also brought with it some degree of trepidation. After all, no presentation context exposes the musician more nakedly than performing alone, and the West Coast-based pianist understandably wanted to feel that he'd be ready for the challenge. Certainly his background has armed him with all the tools necessary. He grew up exposed to classical music as a young boy and then jazz as a teenager; consistent with that, he studied classical piano with Ursula Oppens at Brooklyn College and jazz piano with the equally esteemed Fred Hersch at the Manhattan School of Music. Both influences emerge in Behroozi's playing on his third release, Standard Fare, which features nine classics refracted through his personal prism.

The album title invites multiple interpretations, one less promisingly suggesting the song choices are pretty much business-as-usual, and in that regard the set-list offers little by way of surprise. Well-trodden fare from the American songbook appears, as do two tunes by Monk—standard fare indeed. However, the makeovers Behroozi gives the material are terrific and more than compensate for familiarity. It's tempting to think he made his selections as a form of provocation, as a way of proving to the listener that no matter how often a tune has been played, the creative possibilities it offers can never be exhausted when a fresh spin is brought to it.

It helps that the standards are ones he knows backwards and forwards, songs he's absorbed over the course of many years and can extemporize upon with ease. When he tackles something like “All of You,” for example, the chord progressions, song structure, and melodies have been internalized so deeply, he's able to give free rein to his imagination and let the exploration take him where it will. That shouldn't be interpreted to mean no forethought was given to the approach used for a given piece. A conceptual plan was clearly laid out in advance for an audacious reworking of “I Love Paris” that finds him darkening Cole Porter's rhapsodic paean with minor tonalities, a gesture that gives the piece an entirely different character and makes the transition to major resonate all the more powerfully. Alternating between classical-influenced and wistful expressions also helps make the performance an album standout. A shadowy dimension likewise pervades Porter's “Just One of Those Things” when the pianist overlays a two-chord ostinato with fleet-fingered improvisations.

Enhancing the intimacy of the solo presentation, Standard Fare was recorded in a prepared living room in San Jose during January 2023, with Behroozi playing a Bosendorfer. Personal familiarity with the songs and, the Monk tunes excepting, their lyrics also allows the performances to flow freely and in a conversational mode. That Behroozi's absorbed jazz history is evident during his free-wheeling treatment of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein's “All the Things You Are,” in which the melody is allusively teased at rather than stated directly. That makes for a fascinating ride highlighted by dazzling runs, a brief stride detour, and block chord flourishes.

His classical side rises to the fore during the pensive examination of Porter's “All of You,” which morphs from an initial Schumann-like treatment into a more open-ended and stately meditation. Delivered at a slow, ponderous tempo, the performance affords a great opportunity to hear Behroozi at his most delicate, as does the beautifully tender rendering of the Hoagy Carmichael and Ned Washington classic, “The Nearness of You.” In Behroozi's hands, Rodgers and Hart's “With a Song in My Heart” becomes a mercurial adventure that's by turns tender, lyrical, and bluesy. Brooks Bowman's “East of the Sun,” on the other hand, broods portentously.

July 2023