Jeremy Ledbetter brings cosmopolitan pianistic palette to the Shadbolt
The trio leader has fully integrated Latin and Caribbean sounds into his approach
Jeremy Ledbetter Trio.
Shadbolt Centre for the Arts presents the Jeremy Ledbetter Trio on October 26 at 7:30 pm
THE RESULTS ARE conclusive: there is an undeniable link between childhood trauma and adult dysfunction. Yet there has been regrettably little research done into the connection between childhood delight and adult success. Should any bright grad student want to take it on, let me present Exhibit A: the accomplished Canadian pianist and bandleader Jeremy Ledbetter, whose early exposure to wonder shaped his future life in the most agreeable way.
Reached by phone while en route to a show in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Ledbetter reports that he’d never given music a second thought until, at the ripe old age of three, he had a welcome epiphany.
“I was bon in Kitchener, Ontario, not far from Toronto,” he explains, “and my first musical experience was my parents taking me to see the movie Fantasia, that Disney movie with all the classical music. I’d never seen live music before, I’d never heard orchestral music before, I’d never been to a movie theatre before. I was really young. My parents were nervous about whether this three-year-old kid was going to behave himself, but i was blown away by the thing. It just completely fascinated me. After that first-time experience of music, it just sort of took over everything.”
There are no mouse magicians in the music Ledbetter makes today, no cupids or centaurs or dancing ostriches. But Fantasia’s influence comes through in the pianist’s animated performances, in the rapid-fire leaps of mood and tone that his trio is capable of, and in his audience’s suspicion that anything could happen at any time. But, as the artist himself says, “You’re a product of all of your influences,” and a lot more has gone into Ledbetter’s musical growth than that one happy afternoon in a small-town cinema.
Initially, and unsurprisingly, Ledbetter was soon enrolled in piano lessons, and quickly became something of a prodigy. Then luck and fate collided to steer him in a different direction. While he was working his way through the Royal Conservatory of Music lesson plan, he was also rocking out to the sounds of Pearl Jam, U2, and the Tragically Hip—and, surprisingly, getting an education in the music of the Deep South.
“In my high-school years there was a blues guitarist named Mel Brown, who was from the Mississippi Delta and somehow ended up relocating to Kitchener, of all places,” the pianist notes. “He would do a weekly gig somewhere in the city, and I think I saw him play every week for three years. Really, I did not miss a night of seeing him. So I got really fascinated with the blues, and then that led me to jazz, I guess. I gravitated to jazz because I felt it was a type of music where skill—technical skill on the instrument, execution, and virtuosity—was still very highly valued. So I definitely wanted to be playing music that was challenging in that way but that also wasn’t as strait-laced as the classical world. There was a lot more room for creativity.”
A lot more room for external influences, too. While Ledbetter is an excellent modern-jazz pianist in the mode of, say, Chick Corea or Herbie Hancock, he’s also one of a handful of Canadian keyboardists who has fully integrated both Latin and Caribbean sounds into his approach. Again, fate played a role. He was enrolled in the York University music department and had already spent some time in Cuba when he was offered a place as an exchange student at the University of the Southern Caribbean. And while his nominal intent was to make an academic study of Trinidad’s steelpan phenomenon, he was soon drawn into the exciting world of calypso and its modern-day descendant, soca.
“I knew I wanted to stay in school, but I didn’t want to be in Toronto,” he says, laughing. “I wanted to be somewhere more interesting, so I went on this exchange program. I was supposed to be there for eight months, but within three months I was getting hired to play, so at the end of eight months I called York from Trinidad and said ‘Thank you for this opportunity. I’m not coming back.’ And I stayed there for three years.
“One thing led to another,” he adds, “and within a year I was the musical director of one of the most well-known soca ensembles in Trinidad, and I was producing soca at the radio station where they churn out all the hits, and working with all the biggest artists in Trinidad.”
Indeed, for more than two decade’s he’s been David Rudder’s musical director, Rudder being one of the Caribbean’s most successful vocalists. Ledbetter has also spent time studying music, playing music, and just hanging out in Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, and elsewhere. This has given him an unusually cosmopolitan pianistic palette, but has also schooled him in the audience-pleasing aspects of the entertainment business.
“It’s important to play for the audience, for lack of a better way to describe it,” he says. “To play music that is engaging and interesting, but that doesn’t require a huge intellectual investment to be able to follow.
“I know there are a lot of musicians in our audiences, so if people want to make that intellectual investment there are things in the music that will satisfy them,” he adds. “They will find lots of nice, sophisticated, complex things, but generally speaking I’m not bludgeoning the audience over the head with that stuff. People will be entertained on an emotional, visceral level. But we do open things up, and the songs are never the same twice. Every performance is unique.”
Ledbetter’s extroverted nature helps with this, abetted by the two powerhouse musicians he’ll share the stage with at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts on October 26. Simply put, bassist Rich Brown and drummer Larnell Lewis are extraordinary, and the pianist knows he’s lucky to have them at his side.
“As a composer, working with Rich and Larnell completely sets me free,” he says. “I can write anything, try anything… There are no limits to what those two guys can execute. So i can write anything I want, knowing that it’s going to be executed flawlessly, and probably better than I could have imagined, even.”
Maybe that’s the real gift that the three-year-old Ledbetter took away from Fantasia’s exuberant dreamscape: that magic is possible, and that it can be a whole lot of fun, too. 
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