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The Luke Gillespie Trio: Live At The Station

The Accidental Album

Luke Gillespie didn't mean to record a CD.

The CD, Live at the Station, was recorded during a gig the Indiana University School of Music professor and jazz pianist played with his trio one Friday night in November 2008, at the former Bloomington club Jazz at the Station.

Drummer Jason Tiemann recorded the performance on his Edirol digital recorder, as he often does when he's working.

A few days later, he called Gillespie and bassist Jeremy Allen to tell them that the music and the sound quality of the recording might be worthy of release.

After A Long Silence

Though Gillespie has appeared on a number of other projects by artists such as the Buselli-Wallarab Orchestra, he hadn't put out a CD under his own name since his 2003 solo-piano debut Footprints. The new recording, Live at the Station features a set of standards, including "Have You Met Miss Jones," Dizzy Gillespie's "Con Alma," and "Stompin' at the Savoy." None of it was planned.

"I didn't really tell anybody what I was going to do," Gillespie says, laughing. "And I wasn't sure myself what I was going to do for a little bit. Then, after a few seconds or so of playing, I'd realize, 'Oh, this is what I'm gonna do,' and I just expected them to follow. Sometimes it took us a little while to get going. It's like turning the engine of an old car: Finally, after a little bit, it turns over."

From Intimacy, Music Grows

The intimacy of such a spontaneous, small-group setting demands a high level of concentration and artistic camaraderie. "Everybody really has to be serving the music," Gillespie says. "Having really strong musicians like Jeremy and Jason playing? Of course that makes it easy. You have to have a certain musical interaction, a conversation that has balance and sympathetic emotion among all of the musicians."

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