Darrell Grant

Pianist and educator Darrell Grant is known for his bold yet nuanced approach to jazz, one informed by the post-bop tradition as well as R&B and 20th century classical composers. Grant first garnered attention in the 1980s alongside Betty Carter and Tony Williams before leading his own ensembles on albums like 1995's The New Bop, 1997's Twilight Stories, and 2007's Truth and Reconciliation. A professor at Portland State University, he splits his time between teaching and performing, releasing albums like 2015's double-disc The Territory (with Brian Blade) and 2022's The New Black (with Marquis Hill), recorded live at the Blue Note in New York City. Born in 1962 in Philadelphia, Grant moved to Denver, Colorado, as a young child. Starting piano lessons before his teens, he was enough of a prodigy that he joined the Boulder-based Pearl Street Jazz Band, a young but internationally renowned traditional New Orleans-style combo, at the impossibly tender age of 15, touring worldwide with the group for two years. Grant won a scholarship to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, at the age of 17. While at Eastman (where his classmates included future novelist Nicholson Baker), he focused on performance studies over theory, which he covered in his graduate studies in jazz theory and composition at the University of Miami. Relocating to New York in the mid-'80s, Grant skirted past the then-dominant M-Base clique in the local jazz scene, instead taking a series of low-profile sideman gigs. After a long stint with Betty Carter, he worked with luminaries like Chico Freeman and Greg Osby; he also replaced Mulgrew Miller as the pianist in drummer Tony Williams' group. Grant finally stepped out as a bandleader for the first time with 1994's Black Art. The album was well-reviewed and sold respectably, and the following year's The New Bop was an even bigger critical success. Twilight Stories was released on Joel Dorn's 32 Jazz label in 1997; Grant's appearance on that label, devoted primarily to classic reissues, cemented the esteem in which bop devotees hold him. In 1997, he moved to Portland, Oregon, taking over for pianist Andrew Hill as a member of the jazz faculty at Portland State University. Besides his duties as an educator and scholar, he remained active as a performer. The lengthy short story written by Grant in the liner notes of 1999's Smokin' Java, his first published piece of prose, is a thinly veiled autobiography about the cross-country move of a jazz pianist from New York to Portland and his eventual addiction to coffee as a result of the brew's cultural dominance in the Pacific Northwest. The lighthearted, twisty compositions reflect the bright, tongue-in-cheek tone of the short story, for which the album functions as a suitably caffeinated soundtrack. The ambitious double-disc suite called Truth and Reconciliation appeared from Origin Records in 2007. Grant recorded several albums as a member of the Bridge Quartet before returning to his own work with 2015's The Territory. Featuring his title-track suite, the album found him working with an all-star ensemble including drummer Brian Blade, vibraphonist Joe Locke, saxophonist Steve Wilson, and others. A live album recorded at New York's Birdland, The New Black, arrived in 2022 and featured Grant with trumpeter Marquis Hill, bassist Clark Sommers, and drummer Kendrick Scott.
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