Jazz prodigy holds keys to stardom

When jazz superstar Wynton Marsalis headlined USC’s Bovard Auditorium recently, he was at risk of being upstaged by a 19-year-old sophomore in the university’s jazz studies program before he even blew a note on his trumpet.

Pianist Gerald Clayton, performing with the USC Jazz Orchestra, was the center of attention in the concert’s opening set. Tall and lanky, with Medusa-like dreadlocks crowning his head, he played with a driving sense of swing, an improvisational inventiveness and an individuality that belied his youth.

Later, Clayton laughingly recalls meeting Marsalis after the performance:

“I went up to him, introduced myself and said, ‘Nice to meet you.’ But he just mentioned one of the pieces we’d done and said, ‘I usually like to play that tune a bit slower.’ ”

Clayton, who is strikingly mature both musically and intellectually, was well aware that the remark was a sly -- if somewhat backhanded -- compliment.

More often, the praise for Clayton has been direct and unvarnished. At a time when jazz piano prodigies are moving into the spotlight around the world (think Taylor Eigsti, Peter Cincotti, Aaron Parks and Eldar Djangirov), Clayton is showing all the signs of becoming one of the most significant young jazz artists to emerge in the Southland in recent years.

Ruth Price, the president and creative director of the Jazz Bakery, has brought virtually every major-name jazz pianist to her Culver City concert room over the last decade. And she hasn’t hesitated to place Clayton, who has performed at the Bakery as both a sideman and a leader, among that fast company.

“Gerald plays with more maturity than one can expect from players his age,” says Price, a veteran singer who has worked with everyone from Charlie Ventura to Shelly Manne. “That’s obvious. But even beyond that, he’s an amazing talent. He’s still budding, still growing, but he already can stand on his own with most of the people we bring to the Bakery.”

Michael Melvoin, a highly regarded jazz pianist, agrees, adding, “I like the respect, the affection and the knowledge of jazz history that is built into the musical language that he displays. He has integrated it all -- and not in a surfacey way, but in a very organic way -- into a style of his own. It’s a wonderful thing.”

Clayton belongs to a generation of university-trained players who are learning to balance in-the-trenches jazz gigs with an academic education surveying every aspect of the music’s history and technique.

“I could have just gone to the East Coast, like some of players I know, and just concentrated on woodshedding my playing and focusing on the whole gig scene,” he says. “But I think I would have missed out on something important if I’d taken that route.”

That would be the opportunity to glean the benefits of USC’s jazz program, and to continue to grow and develop in a musical environment that has welcomed his playing since he was a young teenager.

Clayton is the son of John Clayton, the well-known bassist, composer and arranger who co-leads the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. Born in the Netherlands, he came to Los Angeles with his father and his Dutch mother, Christina -- a linguistics professor at Cal State Northridge and a speech therapist for disabled children -- when he was a year old. Both he and his sister, Gina, grew up speaking English and Dutch and traveling to Holland every summer. Although he now lives near USC, Clayton remains closely connected to his family (“I still take my laundry home”), with his father remaining one of his primary inspirations.

“I think I knew I was going to be a musician for the rest of my life kind of early,” Clayton recalls, speaking in a deep, resonant voice. Sprawled on a couch in a San Fernando Valley office, his dreadlocks tucked neatly inside a cap, he remembers his early years with a warm smile.

“When I was in third grade, I was playing in a talent show, and my dad wrote a two- or three-minute boogie-woogie piece. I played it, everybody loved it, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is great.’

“But I think the thing that really did it was when I went to sound checks with my dad ....I got to see the warmth and the love, the way the musicians interact -- grown men giving each other hugs and kisses just because they love what they do. I really looked up to that environment as a kid. So instead of saying, ‘I want to be a fireman,’ it was, ‘I’m going to be a jazz musician.’ ”

Understandably, Clayton’s first influence was his father’s music, and such elders as Ray Brown and Oscar Peterson. “Now I’m listening to more out stuff -- Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett and Brad Mehldau, and I really love them too. But at the end of the day, the stuff that hits me the hardest is Oscar Peterson.”

That’s not to say that Clayton is a 19-year-old musical dinosaur. Far from it. He is as familiar with hip-hop and rap as he is with jazz. And unlike older jazz players who have attempted to graft those pop forms onto their music, he prefers to avoid genre distinctions.

“I make a lot of hip-hop beats and stuff, and I was in a hip-hop band for a while,” he says. “And I’ve had thoughts about, ‘OK, how can I integrate these things?’ But I don’t think that’s the right way to go about things. I think the main focus as a musician should be to play the music you love to play, and the rest is going to come naturally.”

Clayton, who plans to spend his junior year in New York, already is applying to the Manhattan School of Music.

“I want to see what spending a year in New York will do to my playing,” he says, “whether it will completely change me, or just help me along the same path -- with maybe more New York energy.”

Already on the view screens of several jazz record companies, he also will have to resolve his ambivalence about making a first album.

“I don’t want to put out an album until I’m comfortable with hearing what people think about it,” Clayton says.

One thing that is not likely to change is his belief in jazz as an experiential rather than an intellectual art.

“Some people say that if you do anything other than a straight-ahead groove,” Clayton says, demonstrating by singing a walking bass, “that it’s not jazz. But that kind of labeling is wrong. Music is what it is; if it sounds good, it sounds good.

“The same thing’s true of those jazz clubs where you pay a lot to get in and then you have to sit quietly listening. Well, no 18-through-25-year-old is going to want to pay $20 to sit down and be quiet. They want to drink and party. And jazz is that kind of music to me. It should make you want to say, ‘Yeah!’ and feel free to say, ‘Yeah!’ without having a bunch of old jazz nerds saying, ‘Don’t do that; we’re trying to listen to the music.’ Well, hey man, that’s what we’re doing. Are you?”

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The Gerald Clayton Trio

Where: The Westin Los Angeles Airport Hotel Lobby Court, 5400 W. Century Blvd.

When: Tonight, sets from 6 to 10 p.m.

Price: No cover; $10 minimum

Contact: (310) 216-5858