It was a simple question that I asked Pat Bianchi: Which is your dominant hand? His answer was more complex than I expected.
“I’m kind of both,” he said. “I write with my left hand. I can write with my right hand, too, so it kind of flips back and forth.”
Ambidexterity is a useful trait for a keyboard player to possess, and because Bianchi’s primary instrument is the Hammond B-3 organ, his feet are also involved.
The lack of a dominant hand is an interesting footnote for sure but it’s also a metaphor for the absence of a dominant aesthetic in Bianchi’s musical choices, something that makes his Friday appearance at BOP STOP an unusually compelling event.
Sure, the formation of organ, tenor saxophone and drums has brought crowds in search of toe-tapping, bluesy entertainment to jazz rooms across the East Coast and Midwest for 70 years. It’s evergreen, and in muscular saxophonist Troy Roberts and Philly groovemaster Byron “Wookie” Landham, Bianchi has two players so deep in that tradition that you might expect to smell Chesterfield cigarette smoke and Canadian Club in the fabric of their instrument bags.
But while the three can pour out a greasy shuffle blues like it’s 1964, Bianchi’s musical horizons take the venerable organ trio in new directions. “I love [Brother Jack] McDuff. I love [Jimmy] McGriff. I love Jimmy Smith. I love all the greats. The vibe they get; there’s nobody alive that can do that,” he said by phone from New York. “Having played a lot of piano, I love Chick Corea. I love Kenny Barron. I love the classic Coltrane quartet, or the second Miles [Davis] Quintet. So it’s like, all right, let me figure out how to try to do some of this on the organ.”
To hear just how masterfully Bianchi does this, check out his latest recording Three (Savant, 2024). It’s an old-fashioned blowing session, a covers record, but the covers might surprise you. There’s a couple of chestnuts in “Love For Sale” and “Stardust.” Nothing unusual about that except that the choruses of Cole Porter’s great blowing vehicle are in 7 with Roberts absolutely eating up the familiar changes (“Stardust” is done straight—and beautifully—as it should be). “When Sunny Gets Blue” and “Cheek To Cheek” are seldom heard anymore, and no one plays the latter as a warp-speed postbop burner as these guys do. Eddie Harris’ “Cryin’ Blues” holds down the tradition, but “Dance Cadaverous” is an unexpected choice with the the B-3’s ability to hold sustained notes stirring a dark mystery into Wayne Shorter’s classic line.
Bianchi has covered Monk, Stevie Wonder and even Willie Nelson on recent recordings. And why not? “If you think about it, it’s obviously in church, it’s in country music, it’s in R&B, it’s in jazz,” he said about his chosen instrument. “It’s a sound everybody’s used to hearing.”
At 48, Bianchi is a bit too young to have heard it in the organ rooms of his native Rochester, New York, but he absorbed the tradition from his father and grandfathers, all of whom were musicians. “My first gift was Christmas gift at seven was a Farfisa compact organ,” Bianchi said. “That’s how I started learning playing left-hand bass, learning how to play those melodies, and by 12 or 13, I was actually subbing in dance bands on the weekends playing Glenn Miller medleys and all that stuff.”
In his time at the Berklee School of Music, Bianchi played mostly piano, but a later encounter with the late organist Joey DeFrancesco changed his direction to the B-3 and led to high profile gigs with guitarist Pat Martino and saxophonist Lou Donaldson.
About Martino, Bianchi said “Pat was the kind of person that it was 150% from the time it started to the time it finished. There was no letting up. It was a very humbling experience.” As for Donaldson who died last week at 98, Bianchi recalls his first gig with the band in Baltimore. “I’m nervous The place is packed. We play the first tune, [Donaldson’s 1957 hit] ‘Blues Walk.’ Not a problem. The second tune we played was uptempo ‘Rhythm’ changes. No problem. I finally started to relax a little bit and then he looks over at me and he goes, ‘Do you know, “The Masquerade Is Over?” And I go ‘Lou, I’m sorry. I don’t know that.” Donaldson turned to the crowd and proclaimed, in a loud voice “Well, you’re gonna learn it now!”
Obviously, everything worked out for the best, and that style of trial-by-fire, tough-love music education isn’t part of Bianchi’s philosophy as a teacher at Berklee. But fire? That’s something he and his band reliably bring to the bandstand.
“I’m pushing myself to try to do these different things, Bianchi said. “It’s made me a stronger musician and kept me more aware and challenged for sure.”
NOTE: This article was written by a real human being. No artificial intelligence or generative language models were used in its creation.
Red beans and ricely yours,
jc
