Harold Mabern

Harold Mabern Jr. (March 20, 1936 – September 17, 2019) was an American jazz pianist and composer, principally in the hard bop, post-bop, and soul jazz fields. He is described in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings as "one of the great post-bop pianists".

Early life Mabern was born in Memphis, Tennessee on March 20, 1936. He initially started learning drums before switching to learning piano. before transferring to Manassas High School; he played with saxophonists Frank Strozier, George Coleman and trumpeter Booker Little at this time, but was most influenced by Newborn Jr. and "playing and practicing 12 hours a day" for the next five years,

Mabern learned orchestration techniques from bassist Bill Lee, and comping and chord voicing from pianists Chris Anderson and Billy Wallace. A few weeks later, most of the members of this band then joined Jimmy Forrest for a recording in Chicago that resulted in the albums All the Gin Is Gone and Black Forrest, which were also guitarist Grant Green's debut recordings.

Mabern steadily built a reputation in New York as a sideman, playing with, among others, Lionel Hampton's big band in 1960 (including a tour of Europe), the Jazztet for 18 months in the period 1961–62, accompanying vocalists, including Betty Carter, Johnny Hartman and Arthur Prysock, and working with trumpeter Donald Byrd and drummer Roy Haynes. From 1965, Mabern also worked with Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, Hank Mobley, Blue Mitchell (1966), Sarah Vaughan, and Joe Williams (1966–67). His first album, A Few Miles from Memphis, featured several of his own originals. From the early 1970s, he worked with trumpeters Clark Terry and Joe Newman, played jazz-pop electric piano with George Benson and Stanley Turrentine, was part of drummer Walter Bolden's trio (1973–74), and led his own trio with Bolden and bassist Jamil Nasser. and Billy Harper for a tour of Japan in the same year. Four years later, Mabern toured Europe with George Coleman, The following year, Mabern played with James Moody. There were also performances and recordings with innumerable other musicians, both as leader and sideman. Mabern also worked with two piano-based groups: the Piano Choir, formed and led by Stanley Cowell from the early 1970s and featuring at least six pianists/keyboardists, and the four-player Contemporary Piano Ensemble, the latter being formed in the early 1990s to pay tribute to Phineas Newborn Jr. and touring extensively, including at the Montreal (1991) and Monterey Jazz Festivals (1996).

Mabern had a career resurgence after his album Straight Street was a success in Japan in 1989. He visited Japan in 1990 as a member of a ten-pianist group that toured together but played and recorded separately. In the mid-1990s, Mabern toured with and led a trio of bassist Erik Applegate and drummer Ed Thigpen. In 2010, Mabern received the Don Redman Heritage Award.

Mabern's repute in Japan was reflected in his signing by the Japanese label Venus, which resulted in six albums from 2002; Mabern stated in 2004 that his 2002 recording for Venus, Kiss of Fire, featuring Alexander as a guest, was his best seller. Mabern was a frequent instructor at the Stanford Jazz Workshop. Mabern's stated piano preference was "naturally the Steinway D, but if you can't get a D, any Steinway". "Mabern played in Britain [...] in 2017 and 2018 with a quartet featuring Alexander, and finally for two evenings with his trio at Ronnie Scott's club in May 2019." Critic Gary Giddins identified some of the characteristics of Mabern's playing as being "blues glisses, [...] tremolos and dissonant block chords", that help to create a style "that marries McCoy Tyner's clustering modality with rippling asides that stem from [Art] Tatum". The influence of Phineas Newborn Jr. remained noticeable: Mabern employed Newborn's "manner of playing fast lines in a two-handed octave (or two-octave) unison, and uses this device in wildly imaginative ways". 2018 Mabern Plays Coltrane Smoke Sessions Sextet, with Eric Alexander (tenor sax), Vincent Herring (alto sax), Steve Davis (trombone), John Webber (bass), Joe Farnsworth (drums); in concert

As sideman