Jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut & Friends bringing ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ to Severance Music Center – cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio – On Friday evening the sounds of jazz-infused holiday music will reverberate through the stately Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center as jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut & Friends perform an evening of holiday music centered by the beloved songs from “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” Tickets for the show start at $50 and are available at the clevelandorchestra.com.

Chestnut will perform with his quartet, including a young New York-based singer Haley Driver, who Chestnut considers a “young dynamo” and a “name that people should remember because she is a special person.”

At least four generations of folks have been raised on Vince Guaraldi’s elegant, swinging score, featuring familiar classics, including “Linus and Lucy,” the ballad “Christmas Time Is Here” and the joyful, bouncy cascading notes of “Skating.”

The 60-year-old Baltimore native first gained notoriety as one of the nattily attired New Young Lions of the late ‘80s and ‘90s as a sideman with musical peers that included Wynton and Branford Marsalis and trumpeter Terence Blanchard as well as established legends such as singer Betty Carter, pianist Chick Corea and bebop icon Dizzy Gillespie. Chestnut made his recording debut in 1992 with “There’s A Brighter Day” and has released more than 30 albums and has appeared on more than 100 recordings in the past 30 years.

One of those albums was “A Charlie Brown Christmas” credited to Cyrus Chestnut & Friends featuring varied and groovy arrangements of songs from the 1965 CBS TV special that has become a traditional American holiday viewing for many families. The album features several guest artists, including saxophonists Kenny Garrett and Michael Brecker, singers Brian McKnight and Vanessa Williams and the Boys Choir of Harlem.

Chestnut is still recording and released “My Father’s Hand” in 2022 a tribute to his father McDonald Chesnut who died in 2021.

But Chestnut spends a big part of his year as a Performer/Master Instructor at Howard University in Washington D.C. During a break in office hours Chestnut talked to Cleveland.com about the lasting power of Guaraldi’s music, the creativity of the next generations of musicians and how he wants his music to make people leave the theater happier than when they arrived.

Cleveland.com: So, since you’re at Howard right now, I’m guessing this Cleveland show is a one-off for you?

Cyrus Chestnut: Yes, it is. And it’s very special to me because it’s a show for the family. It’s a show for people of all ages, I believe. First and foremost, everybody can relate to Charlie Brown in one way or another. A five-year-old can relate to Charlie Brown as well as a 60-year-old or a 50-year-old can relate to Charlie Brown. And it’s an opportunity I think to be able to present some holiday cheer and in this day and time to present some unity and some peace, put it out there in the atmosphere.

You know, there’s been a whole lot of stress all over the land, all over the planet. So I have the opportunity just to spread a little bit of joy over some familiar titles, maybe not done in a way that is expected. But I think, it’s very important to me, my relationship with Charlie Brown. I mean, I remember growing up, seeing the CBS specials and I would run to the television and I would just be glued to the television. I would always hope that he would eventually strike out the side and win the game, you kick Lucy’s football and get the date with the little redhead girl, all of the above. And the music was just so cool with it, you know? When I was in high school, what made me the guy in the school was the fact that I could play the themes, “Linus and Lucy,” and so it was very dear to my heart. When I recorded the record on the Atlantic label, back around 2000 or something like that.

Even to this day people still talk about that record. They always bring it out at holiday time and, you know, it was a joy to put it together. Any chance I get to share that I enjoy it. I like to and the intention is to send the audience away feeling better than when they arrived.

Cleveland.com: That music, for a lot of folks is probably their first exposure to jazz in any form. As someone who has pulled it apart and put it back together for your album what is the secret sauce that Vince Guaraldi had in his back pocket?

Chestnut: I just think he had the gift of melody and the things that he wrote were really easy for people to catch and the music, especially with Charlie Brown, fit the cartoon. I think it was a perfect marriage if I could say that it’s a perfect marriage and it was very easy to connect with.

Cleveland.com: The combination of the sights of the show with the music and the emotions of the characters.

Chestnut: Think about this, the piece “Skating,” and just hear that music behind the little kids skating on the pond. It is beautiful. It’s Christmas is coming. Even when Lucy asked Schroeder to compose something and he started, he got this groove and everybody, all the kids on the floor dancing. Pigpen is dancing so much that all the dust is coming off. You know, it’s so, it’s so easy to connect to. I think that’s why it’s become one of those timeless, things.

Cleveland.com: It seems every few years someone, often a musician, frets publicly about the lack of jazz in the mainstream music zeitgeist. You were part of a “jazz renaissance” back in the 80s and 90s do you worry about jazz’s pop culture profile?

Chestnut: Well, you know, I think the best thing we can do is just be true to who we are and present the music. Those who will receive it, let them receive it and those who won’t… There was a time when jazz was presented in places like Madison Square Garden and I believe that it could be done again. You just have to keep moving forward. The music is powerful. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be in it. I wouldn’t be able to do what I do now. And it transcends from generation to generation. So, the best way I can develop a career and, using the words of the great Betty Carter, “win the audience over with skill, not gimmicks or tricks.”

So I play the best music I possibly can and send the person away feeling better than when they arrive. Hopefully, they’ll tell someone and then we just build an audience one performance at a time and build it and build it and build it.