Halfway through Bill Charlap’s early set at Birdland on Friday night, the great pianist played, “You’re All the World to Me.” He then picked up the mic, turned around to face the crowd, and marveled at the way Fred Astaire introduced the song in the 1951 movie musical “Royal Wedding.”
This is the classic number in which the legendary song-and-dance man literally defies gravity by strutting, whirling, tapping, and pirouetting all over the walls and ceiling of a room. Astaire, Mr. Charlap explained, used a devilishly clever bit of “practical effects” to achieve this feat of movie magic.
After hearing this pianist and his amazing Trio for 25 years now, I still can’t figure how he does it — how Mr. Charlap makes his own magic happen.
“You’re All the World to Me,” which composer Burton Lane had repurposed from an earlier song by virtue of a new lyric by Alan Jay Lerner, is also a highpoint of Mr. Charlap’s latest album, “Street of Dreams.” Mr. Charlap starts slowly, tentatively, with the verse, rendering it in a hesitating, probing fashion as if he were looking for an answer, or seeking a pathway. His confidence increases when he arrives at the melody — it’s like he’s now found his musical compass — and by the time he completes a full chorus of the tune, he is ready to improvise and tear down the highway with gusto.
More literally, he starts defying gravity in his own way, even as Astaire did, teleporting across the globe. He’s playing the tune but is driven by the lyric, which moves from “Paris in April and May” and then to “New York on a silvery day” in just two lines, and next, just as swiftly, transports us to the Swiss Alps and Loch Lomond before we’re even 16 bars into it.
Could it be that this mixing of moods — using tempo as an indicator — is a key part of Mr. Charlap’s magical musical toolkit? He faked us out several times at Birdland, as in the opener, which began with the bouncy intro to “Squeeze Me (But Don’t Tease Me),” with rumbling bass notes, but then followed with an understated reading of “What Is this Thing Called Love?” It was swinging but spare, with lots of open spaces along the way.