R.I.P. Richie Beirach

The great Brooklyn-born pianist passed last week at age 73

I’m almost afraid to turn on my computer anymore. Seems like every day another Great One has passed. Today it was pianist Richie Beirach, who died at age 78 on Jan. 26 in Hessheim, Germany following a long illness. Best known for his five-decades-long collaboration with saxophonist Dave Liebman, and over 400 acclaimed recordings as a leader or sideman with the likes of Stan Getz, Chet Baker, Randy Brecker, Jack DeJohnette and John Scofield, Beirach’s ongoing health situation had left him struggling with overwhelming medical expenses and unable to work. A GoFundMe campaign set up for him by German violinist-composer Gregor Huebner (a Beirach collaborator since 1996) raised roughly $42,000 to defray his health costs.

The Brooklyn-born Beirach had moved to Germany in 2000 to teach jazz piano at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy University of Music and Theatre in Leipzig, a position he held until 2015. He continued performing around Europe while also recording for Jazzline Records. His 2023 solo recording, Leaving, documented a live concert at Château Fleur Cardinale vineyard in Saint-Etienne-de-Lisse, in the St. Emilion region near Bordeaux, France. I did liner notes for his subsequent album, Testaments, a three-CD set in celebration of Beirach's 75th birthday containing his collaborations in duo and trio settings with German violinist Gregor Huebner and his bassist brother Veit that cover jazz standards and classical pieces along with some stirring originals that border on the avant garde.

Melody Eternal, which is still waiting release (and which I also did liner notes for) showcased Beirach's last working trio of bassist Tilman Oberbeck and drummer Tobias Frohnhöfer, newcomers on the German scene who were half Beirach’s age.

I first heard Beirach on record in the mid ‘70s on Dave Liebman’s Sweet Hands and Light'n Up, Please!, then finally saw play in the early ‘80s with Quest (featuring Liebman, bassist George Mraz, drummer Al Foster and later with bassist Ron McClure and drummer Billy Hart). But it was more recently that I got to know Richie through various interviews that I did with him for Jazziz magazine and for my book Ode to a Tenor Titan: The Life and Times and Music of Michael Brecker, as well as for a couple of sets of liner notes that I had done for him in the past few years. In lengthy phone calls and Zoom chats from his home in Germany, he talked about his current projects and also reminisced about his early days in Brooklyn, growing up near his longtime musical partner Dave Liebman, with whom he formed the musicians cooperative Free Life Communications loft scene in the late ‘60s. In a 2023 interview for Jazziz, Liebman said this about his late comrade Beirach: “Richie’s funny, he’s hilarious. He’s extremely bright. He’s one of the brightest guys I’ve ever known and he’s got a lot of wisdom. So it’s good that he’s back in the fold now. He’s needed because he’s a great improviser and explainer also. He’s a pleasure to be with and to play with. The way he was when we first met in the ’60s and ’70s is the way he is now — very generous and bright and funny and energetic. What more do you want from a guy?”

Here are excerpts from that same joint interview I conducted with Liebman and Beirach for a piece in the March 2023 issue of Jazziz entitled “The Boys From Brooklyn”:

This musical connection that you have with Dave goes well beyond the notes on a page. There’s some indelible soul connection happening between you two.

Absolutely. And he looks exactly the same now as he did when I met him in 1967 at a jam session in Queens, except he had black horn-rimmed glasses and a Chevy Impala back then. Lieb was way ahead of me when we first met, in terms of musical development. I was 20, he was 21, but he had already been hanging out and playing with Bob Moses and Larry Coryell. And, man, he could play! I could sort of play but I knew very few tunes. So we hooked up with a fake book and I learned some tunes and it felt good to play together.

We spent so much time playing in his loft on 19th Street — the same building where Chick Corea was on the first floor, Dave Holland had the second floor and Lieb had the third floor. And we started becoming good friends and hanging out together. We were two Jewish guys who were both born in Brooklyn just a few blocks from each other, young white cats who loved jazz, who could play a little bit and loved Miles’ quintets, Bill Evans’ trios and, of course, John Coltrane’s quartet. We’d go together to Birdland, sit in the peanut gallery and watch this shit live. And these were the main cats, like Mount Rushmore cats. They were all young and strong then and it was unbelievably inspiring. We’d see Trane and Miles and afterward we couldn’t talk. It was so moving and just the heaviest shit in the world that I ever heard. So we were very close and day-to-day back then. We played together constantly and we helped each other learn the music. And we formed a bond that has lasted for 55 years.

By the time you formed Quest, you both were older and more seasoned players.

Definitely. We formed Quest in 1980, so we were in our early 30s and could really play. We weren’t just kids or students anymore. And things were so open in the ’80s. Japan had all the money, Japan loved American jazz. So we went over there four times a year. In New York there were 20 active clubs featuring music every Tuesday through Sunday. And our friends, Mike and Randy Brecker, had a club called Seventh Avenue South where we could play. And then there was Bradley’s after hours, the Village Vanguard, Sweet Basil, Lush Life, Birdland and other clubs. So we had gigs in New York whenever we wanted to play, then we’d go on the road all over the United States, Japan, all the summer festivals in Europe. There were just wonderful opportunities and record dates for us in the ’80s. Record companies were making money back then because people were still buying records. So there was a thriving business and the record companies were connected to the booking agents. We had the blessing of working with the Abercrombie Quintet with Jack Whitamore, who also booked Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderley. So it was a great time.

How would you characterize Dave Liebman?

The thing about Liebs … he’s very unusual because he’s not a normal jazz saxophone personality. He’s actually very intellectual, very generous, kind, caring about people, extremely conscious of world events. He was an American history major in school at NYU. He never went to music school. And so he had a very broad view of the world. A natural leader. A lot of authority. And of course, he played with Elvin and Miles. There’s nothing better for a sax player. That was at the top of the ladder, as far as I was concerned. Sure, I worked with Stan Getz and Chet Baker and a little bit with Freddie Hubbard, a couple of nights with Joe Henderson, Lee Konitz, those guys. But Lieb was in some Mount Everest shit with those gigs.

What do you admire about Dave’s musicality?

He’s just a remarkable cat and amazingly creative, still. He always had supreme knowledge of melody and what to do with it in terms of articulation and expression. I mean, what he can do with two notes, it’s unbelievable. So coming up, he would help me with melody and I had the harmony. I was the one who went to music school. I went to Manhattan School of Music from 1968 to 1972 for theory and composition. There were no jazz classes then. Jazz was a four letter word, you didn’t even talk about it. And I had a great education as a kid in classical music from my piano teacher, James Palmieri, from when I was 6 until I was 18. So I learned harmony and theory, and I told Lieb everything I learned and he absorbed it. We were also part of a musical community through close friends like Randy and Michael Brecker, John Abercrombie, George Mraz, Dave Holland, Bob Berg, Steve Grossman. And it was great, because without a community you’re very isolated and actually don’t progress that much. School was great but I ended up learning more from my friends than anything I learned in music school.

How would you describe your musical connection with Dave?

Something happens with me and Lieb ... something magical happens that I can’t explain, that I’m glad I can’t explain, because it’s good to have some mystery and not have everything known. I love his sound, especially on soprano. And when he plays a note, I get a feeling. I don’t have perfect pitch but it’s like I have radar with him. And my ear is very fast. In a nanosecond I know what note he’s playing and I, as a piano player, have a choice of what chord to put under it. If we’re playing “Softly As in a Morning Sunrise,” it’s like 16 bars of C minor. But Lieb’s not going to play the notes in a C minor chord, necessarily. He’ll play a B natural or a D flat or an E natural because he’s hearing it that way. And those extremely chromatic notes are the good notes because of the way Trane and Miles explored them. Before them, they were considered wrong notes.

There’s always been chromaticism, from Bach on, but the difference is that every chromatic note that Bach wrote resolved into a chord tone up or down. Very satisfying, very beautiful. But Trane and Schoenberg and Berg, Miles, McCoy, Herbie … they created a language that had the ability for a long duration melodic chromatic note not to resolve that way. And this opens up the entire thing. That’s what the ’60s brought. Now, it comes from Schoenberg and Berg 100 years before, but I’m saying that we are the children of Miles, Trane and Bill Evans, which was, to me, the heavy shit. We absorbed that information and we know it, we lived it, and we have it in our blood because we saw it.

And it’s not enough to know it and to copy it. Jazz is the music of personal expression, so part of the requirement is to come up with your own way of playing. I’m talking about a stylistic manner of playing within the language, like a Wynton Kelly, Hank Mobley or Dexter Gordon. Those cats were not innovators but they were great stylists. Cedar Walton’s got a great style but he’s not an innovator. Freddie Hubbard was an innovator, Ornette Coleman was an innovator, Herbie Hancock is an innovator. Bill Evans created a whole way of playing. Those cats are one of a kind. And the bigger the innovator, the bigger the influence on all the instruments. Like, Bird influenced piano players and drummers besides just sax players. Dave and I … we’re not that. We know we’re not that. We’re stylists. We have a recognizable style.

But with Lieb, when you have a partner like that, besides the emotional support, the musical support was great. Because I would write something just for him. It really helps to write for somebody. Duke and Strayhorn wrote for each other. And the way Wayne would write, he knew what Herbie would play, or McCoy. It’s amazing to have that. Trane wrote some great short-form stuff like “Giant Steps” and “Naima,” and he tried Cedar Walton and Tommy Flanagan and Steve Kuhn on them. And those cats are wonderful musicians. But Trane was looking for something else. And when he found McCoy, that was it. You can hear it. So me and Lieb, it’s a great fit like that. It’s a very full, multi-dimensional relationship, and we’re still happening right now.

So you still feel the magic between you guys?

More than ever. We learned so much from each other, and now I can just look at him when he’s playing and know what to play. It’s like some athletic shit, where you see Shaq and Kobe and those cats playing together. They have that kind of physical and spiritual communication that is just unteachable. It just shows up and … there it is! I can’t explain it, I just know that it exists and it’s still happening. We continue to surprise each other. Surprises keep the blood flowing, keep the music moving. When you’re playing for people, you have to engage them. And the best way to engage them is if you are engaged yourself with your partners on the bandstand. So I’m having a great time with Lieb. I can feel it and he can feel it and the people can feel us.

In a chapter of your book 'Ruminations & Reflections,' you pay some touching tributes in letters to your heroes and mentors.

Yeah, I was very lucky to know Bill Evans in the last five years of his life. We were hanging out. He would come over to my crib on Spring Street. What a great cat! He was so encouraging, too. And when I would talk to Freddie Hubbard and Joe Henderson, they would say, “Oh, we ain’t shit. You should’ve heard Bird and Bud Powell and Dexter when he was young and young Dizzy. That was on a whole other level!” So we had a lot of respect for our masters and teachers and mentors. And now we’re the teachers and the mentors, and it’s nice. I got so much information and practical shit about how to play on the bandstand from Chet Baker and Stan Getz when I played with them. And I told them, “How can I ever thank you?” They both said the same thing: “Pass it on.” So that’s what I do now.