Anything Goes with Gerry Gibbs

ANYTHING GOES: It’s been a big couple of years for Gerry Gibbs and his Thrasher Dream Trio, who play at SOhO on Sunday, December 27, at 7:30 p.m. With their recent albums Gerry Gibbs & The Thrasher Dream Trio, We’re Back, and Live in Studio, the group achieved three number-one records on the National Jazz Radio Charts in less than two years — a rare accomplishment in the jazz world. Only two other artists have had three or more number-one consecutive jazz albums since radios started charting jazz albums in 2002. With the Trio’s eponymous album garnering a Grammy nomination, as well, it’s clear Gibbs’s trio is, for jazz listeners, a dream come true.

Gibbs credits his group’s record-making success to a little bit of genre rule-breaking. Not content to merely play the usual jazz standards, Gibbs enlisted the help of his idols Ron Carter and Kenny Barron to give a jazzy life to genres at which traditionalists might upturn their noses, like elevator muzak and R&B chart-toppers. The new albums, Gibbs said, were so lauded because of how accessible they were. Gibbs wanted to make records “just for people, not for musicians” or hip music intelligentsia, and the Trio’s new releases feature interpretations of works by Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and Earth, Wind & Fire. “The credit goes to the great tunes. I didn’t feel I had to go jive or commercial — they were brilliant tunes to start with, and even old jazz people loved it,” he said.

What’s more, Gibbs constructed Gerry Gibbs & The Thrasher Dream Trio in terms of harmonic concepts, envisioning the album as a single melodic narrative told through harmonic complements. “I put all the pieces together to be like a story, and not just individual great songs that can stand up on their own,” he said, likening the concept to the way a composer may construct a movie score, with many smaller pieces telling a larger story.