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Rich Pellegrin is a musician, scholar, and educator. A professor of music at the University of Florida, he lives in Seattle when not teaching in Gainesville.
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"Moments of absolute bliss. . . . Pellegrin does as the great pianists do, providing encouragement and graceful touches in the background, before jumping forward to take solos that are by turns florid and cracked, balletic and modern." – Downbeat Magazine |
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“Down”
Title cut from the 2019 album Down, Origin/OA2 Records 22163. "Moments of absolute bliss. . . . Pellegrin does as the great pianists do, providing encouragement and graceful touches in the background, before jumping forward to take solos that are by turns florid and cracked, balletic and modern." – Downbeat Magazine, review of Down |
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“Intention”
Opening track of the 2014 album Episodes IV-VI, Origin/OA2 Records 22114. Slow build, collective improvisation at its finest. “Strikingly original music. . . . Phenomenally sensitive and expressive. . . . A collective sound and spirit permeates the proceedings. . . . Pellegrin is clearly an artist to watch.” – Earshot Jazz Magazine, review of Episodes, IV-VI |
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Preface from the Guest Editor
Jazz Perspectives, 2020 I am pleased to have served as Executive Guest Editor for a special issue of Jazz Perspectives devoted to John Coltrane. The articles presented here highlight the multifaceted nature of Coltrane’s career by utilizing a wide scope of methodologies, including transformational, set-theoretical, reductive, rhythmic, textual, historical, statistical, and computational analytical approaches. I would like to thank the other guest editors for their expert reviewing and editing work: Keith Waters, Daniel Shanahan, and Keith Salley. I am grateful to Lewis Porter for his input and for contributing a foreword to the issue. I would also like to thank the editorial team at JP for their assistance, especially Ken Prouty. |
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Solo improvisation recital
Excerpts from a 90-minute concert of free improvisation given at the University of Florida, September 19, 2019. |
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“Improvisation XI”
From the 2021 album Solitude, Origin/OA2 Records 22189. "Magical and elusive. . . . Something special. . . . Pellegrin's imagination never flags. . . . This is music I'll be returning to both for deep listening and for inspiration." – Jazz'halo (Belgium), review of Solitude |
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Harmony versus Voicing: Modeling Local-Level Salience and Stability in Jazz after 1960
Journal of the German Society for Music Theory (ZGMTH), 2022 In this article I compare the more salient features of jazz with what lies beneath the surface, presenting a new theory called Stable Norms and Salient Deviations. I then illustrate this theory with a detailed analysis of Robert Glasper’s performance of “North Portland.” Click HERE to view the online version of the article, which includes audio and video examples. |
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“Improvisation I”
From the 2022 album Passage, Origin/OA2 Records 22199. "Passage masterfully synthesizes these techniques, proving Pellegrin an improviser of uncommon sensitivity and offering an invaluable window into a creative mind at work." – Earshot Jazz Magazine, review of Passage |
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Salience, Common Tones, and Middleground Dissonance in the Fourth Chorus of Brad Mehldau's Improvisation on "All the Things You Are."
Intégral: The Journal of Applied Musical Thought (2023) In this article I take a close look at Mehldau’s epic performance of “All the Things You Are” from Art of the Trio, Volume 4: Back at the Vanguard (1999). The essay uses layer analysis to show how dissonant tones create deep structure in Mehldau’s improvisation. Click HERE to view the online version of the article, which includes audio examples. |
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“Nothing Comes to Mind”
First cut off the 2011 album Three-Part Odyssey, Origin/OA2 Records 22079. Big solos by Rich Pellegrin and tenor saxophonist Neil Welch. “A sound . . . that’s remarkably original, the playing often fierce and stormy, at other times restrained and unabashedly beautiful. Pellegrin seems to have multiple influences, displaying at times the density and drive and penchant for repetition of pianist McCoy Tyner, elsewhere sounding free and unpredictable, like no one but himself on this superb debut.” – All About Jazz (★★★★½), review of Three-Part Odyssey |
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Motive, Collection, and Voice Leading in Coltrane’s “Giant Steps”
Jazz Perspectives, 2020 People often attribute awareness of compositional structure to composers in the Western European tradition, but are less likely to do so for jazz composers, especially if they are African-American. Both the complete set of melodic tones in Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” and the complete set of chord roots adhere strictly to the same symmetrical, nonatonic (nine-note) collection. Could this have occurred by chance or was it necessarily part of Coltrane’s compositional design? I ask that question (and many others) in the article. It turns out to be a surprisingly complex mathematical problem, and I consulted extensively with my colleague Rohit Patra in the University of Florida Department of Statistics to solve it. |
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