The Joey DeFrancesco Trio Hits The GPAC Stage

For Release: January 3, 2012
For more information, contact: Anne Trebil (901) 751-7501

The Germantown Performing Arts Centre presents the Joey DeFrancesco Trio on Saturday, February 4 at 8 p.m. The GPAC is located on 1801 Exeter Road in Germantown, TN. Acknowledged around the world as the greatest jazz organist on the planet, Joey DeFrancesco has been named the top jazz organist by Down Beat’s Critics and Readers Poll every year since 2003. He has played with virtually every jazz great imaginable, beginning at age 17 with Miles Davis to his current tour with David Sanborn.

Single tickets are $25, $35, $45, plus handling fee. They can be purchased at the box office, by phone at (901) 751-7500, or online via GPAC’s website.

Box office hours are between 10 a.m. & 5 a.m. Monday through Friday and noon the day of performance. All major credit cards accepted.

It's as though DeFrancesco was born to play the organ. His father, "Papa John" DeFrancesco has gigged steadily on the Hammond B-3 around Philadelphia and its immediate environs since the '60s. "I started playing when I was 4," he recalls. "I could just play. I was already hearing Jimmy Smith and stuff like that around the house, then one time my Dad brought the organ home from the gig, and when I heard that sound I really got into it. He guided me in the right direction, the dos and the don'ts, but he was never very forceful about it." His father began taking the prodigy to clubs at 7 or 8, and he began playing for money on weekend gigs at 10 years old. By high school DeFrancesco was working steadily around Philadelphia, receiving first-hand instruction from the top-shelf organists who populate and come through the City of Brotherly Love, such as Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff, and numerous others. During those years his trio was named "Best High School Combo" at MusicFest USA, a student competition; he was also the first winner of the Jazz Society of Philadelphia's McCoy Tyner Scholarship.

"I went five years to music school," he recalls. "I didn't pay attention, never learned how to read a note. I love to play and I love to listen, and pretty much whatever I hear I can play pretty quick. I've been influenced by everything -- Miles, Coltrane, piano players like Oscar Peterson, Herbie Hancock, Wynton Kelly, Red Garland, Ahmad Jamal. Whatever music is prevalent in my life at the time comes out in my approach. If I'm listening to a lot of horn, I'll play horn-like, single-note lines; if I'm listening to a lot of piano, I'll play pianistically. Ray Brown and Ron Carter influenced my bass lines, but I don't even have to think about them. They're like another brain that's just there. I can totally concentrate on my right hand; the coordination has always been easy.

"I love Jimmy Smith; to this day he's the king. The Blue Note records he did in the late '50s are very innovative; he was doing things that Coltrane did five-six years later. He's a great hardbop single-note player with impeccable technique, but blues-drenched with an amazing groove. He's all-around great! Larry Young's the one who put the John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, McCoy Tyner approach to the organ. He didn't swing as hard as Jimmy Smith, but his touch was so nice."

You could appropriate DeFrancesco's description of Jimmy Smith to describe his style. He swings ferociously, executes spot-on single-note lines and imaginative bass lines underneath them, can dig deep into the pocket or float over the time. He's told his story with equal comfort in a panoramic range of idioms -- power postbop, on-the-one bebop, abstract reharmonizations, funk that travels the spaceways and soul jazz of the pork chops-and-pasta variety. His high-visibility career kicked off when Miles Davis asked the 17-year-old organ wunderkind to join his late '80s band (he appears on Amandla and Live Round The World). Then he signed a contract with Columbia that resulted in five varied records from 1989 to 1994. He's worked extensively during the '90s with legendary guitarist John McLaughlin (After The Rain and The Free Spirits), and been a sideman in bands led by guitarists Dave Stryker, Randy Johnston, Jimmy Bruno, Danny Gatton and Paul Bollenbeck, his band guitarist for many years. He's been in the studio with saxophonists like Houston Person, Ron Holloway, Kenny Garrett, Gary Thomas and Eric Alexander.

Joey DeFrancesco’s latest release Ballads and Blues (Concord Records) is filled with the virtuoso technique, innate soulfulness, and unending reservoir of creative, blues-drenched harmonic and melodic ideas that have made him a peerless master of the jazz Hammond B-3 organ. In this perfectly paced outing, the organ phenomenon burns red-hot on swinging blues tunes, and smolders with tastefully restrained passion on beautiful ballads. Joey receives empathetic support from the longtime members of his stalwart trio (Paul Bollenback on guitar and Byron Landham on drums) and some very special guests (guitar wizard Pat Martino and soulful saxophonist Gary Bartz). Joey’s father, Papa John DeFrancesco, and his brother, John DeFrancesco, also sit in, making this outing as much fun as it is musically masterful.