Jazz Evening in America celebrates the centennial of influential pianist Elmo Hope. Hear picks from his uncommon discography, pictured above.

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Collage by NPR

Jazz Evening in America celebrates the centennial of influential pianist Elmo Hope. Hear picks from his uncommon discography, pictured above.

Collage by NPR

Elmo Hope may be the largest, most influential jazz pianist you’ve got by no means heard of. He was born 100 years in the past this June, in the course of the Harlem Renaissance. Hope was a baby prodigy in classical piano. As an adolescent, he pushed his finest mates Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk into wildly artistic dimensions.

“Elmo was Bud’s affect, and Monk,” the drummer Philly Joe Jones says. “Monk and Bud liked Elmo a lot. He was an actual genius.”

However whereas Monk and Bud entered the pantheon, Hope by no means got here near their degree of superstar. He confronted a sequence of private and artistic setbacks in his life, together with a heroin dependancy which stunted his skill to play. It additionally led to the revoking of his Cabaret Card — a vital lifeline for artists like himself who relied on New York Metropolis’s membership scene to get seen and discover work.

Regardless of all these challenges, Elmo Hope has left an indelible mark on the story of jazz piano. He’s revered as a refined and mental participant who merged his huge information of concord together with his command of the blues. And his drive to create one thing new.

Elmo Hope died in 1967 at 43 years outdated. In his transient profession, he launched greater than a dozen unique albums and performed with the largest names in jazz, together with John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Clifford Brown. He’s nonetheless praised amongst jazz pianists together with Vijay Iyer and Eric Reed as an artist who helped redefine the style.

“He is without doubt one of the nice composers,” Reed says. “Now we have quite a lot of good composers in jazz music, however there aren’t dozens of nice ones. There’s one Monk, there’s one Duke Ellington, there’s one Billy Strayhorn. And there is one Elmo.”

Set Listing:

(All songs written by Elmo Hope besides as indicated)

• Elmo Hope Trio, “Mo Is On”
• Clifford Brown, “De-Dah”
• Elmo Hope, “Tranquility”
• Elmo Hope, ” So Good”
• Elmo and Bertha Hope, “Yesterdays” (Jerome Kern)
• Elmo Hope Ensemble, “Monique”
• Elmo Hope, “Minor Bertha”
• Elmo Hope Trio, “Joyful Hour”

Credit:

Christopher Johnson, author and producer; Katie Simon, consulting editor; Sarah Geledi, producer; Trevor Smith, producer; Ron Scalzo, episode combine; Suraya Mohamed, undertaking supervisor; Keith Jenkins, vp of visuals and technique at NPR Music; Anya Grundmann, govt producer; Christian McBride, host.