When Caelan Cardello and Rufus Reid performed at New York’s Klavierhaus Piano Store in 2023, Audiophilia Magazine wrote: “For one so young, Caelan Cardello’s playing will take your ears where they have no right to go.”
Those who attended the New Jersey Jazz Society’s Jersey Jazz LIVE! concert in Madison, NJ, on Sunday, April 12, experienced that musical journey — the brilliance of the 25-year-old Cardello’s mastery of the keyboards. The combination of his performance in partnership with one of his mentors, the legendary, 82-year-old bassist Rufus Reid, made this concert very special.
The duo started off with two well-known jazz classics — Cedar Walton’s “Bolivia” and Pat Metheny’s “Question and Answer.” The latter was the title tune on Metheny’s 1990 Geffen trio album that featured Dave Holland on bass and Roy Haynes on drums. “Bolivia” is generally considered Walton’s best-known composition, and Cardello made sure the audience was aware that “Rufus knew Cedar”.
After this, the spotlight was clearly on Reid as the duo played three of his compositions, “It’s The Nights I Like” (the title tune from his 2024 Sunnyside Records album with pianist Sullivan Fortner), “Tranquil”, and “This I Ask of You.” The latter piece was on Reid’s 2017 Newvelle Records release, Terrestrial Dance, and, in a review of the recording, AllAboutJazz’s Karl Ackermann referred to Reid as “one of a handful of true renaissance figures in the arts.” There was also a beautiful medley of music by Billy Strayhorn and an unnamed blues piece that closed the concert on an uplifting, spirited note.
Cardello and Reid were preceded by a quintet of student musicians from County College of Morris in Randolph, NJ, led by vocalist Mak Shapiro of Belvidere, NJ (photo below), who delighted the audience with her renditions of such songs as “All of Me” and Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “The Girl From Ipanema.” Shapiro will be entering Montclair State’s John J. Cali of Music as a Jazz Studies major in the fall. She should have a bright future.
PHOTOS BY MARGUERITE LAFOUNTAINE
