Why did we book a show with a jazz pianist few of us will have ever heard (or even heard of)? Simple. Because Margherita Fava comes to us with high praise from two of the best jazz musicians to play the Legs, Greg Tardy and Shawn Perkinson. I’ll take that any day!
Jazz today is full of whiz kids with plenty of virtuosity at their disposal but with little to say musically. The Italian-born Margherita Fava is something altogether different. The evidence is all over her debut recording, TATATU.
At 27, Fava is not only a fluent pianist but also a compelling composer and bandleader — creative, communicative, and less interested in surface flash than forging an emotional connection with listeners and expressing an individual concept through a band built in her image. Fava has a sharp mind for savvy musical forms but also a sensitive ear for expressive storytelling. She is not just interested in the what of music but the why.
“She’s very soulful,” says the widely recorded bassist Rodney Whitaker, who produced TATATU and mentored Fava at Michigan State University, where he directs the award-winning jazz program. “I’ve never been around anyone writing at this stage in her life where the tunes have so much feeling. Even when she decides to be hip or more complicated harmonically, her music stays melodic. Everything is lyrical and singable.”
Fava, who remains based in Knoxville, Tenn., lists many favorite musicians, including pianists Gerald Clayton, Mulgrew Miller, Herbie Hancock, Red Garland, and Bud Powell, and composers Wayne Shorter, Hancock, Booker Little, Roy Hargrove and Dave Douglas.
Biography
Margherita Fava is pianist, composer, arranger, bandleader, and educator based in Knoxville, Tenn., She was born on October 16, 1995, into a family of classical musicians in the small village of Follina in northeast Italy. Her parents are baroque specialists, her father a violinist and her mother a cellist and singer. Fava started piano lessons at 10, picked up the electric bass as a teenager, and at 17 enrolled in a summer jazz program in nearby Venice sponsored by The New School from New York. One day she learned by ear Miles Davis’ solo on “So What” from Kind of Blue. It changed her life. “It was the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me!” she says.
A scholarship to Michigan State brought Fava to East Lansing, where she studied piano with Xavier Davis and came into the orbit of the charismatic bassist Rodney Whitaker. After graduating with a degree in jazz studies, she earned a master’s degree in music at the University of Tennessee, studying piano with Eric Reed and composition with Greg Tardy.