Benoit Brings It All… Including Charlie Brown

Jazz pianist and composer David Benoit is best known for his big-selling contemporary jazz albums of the 1980-’90s, including three Grammy nominations and a lot of hits. But the 70-year-old Palos Verdes resident whose influences include Leonard Bernstein and Bill Evans has had a much more expansive career. Here are excerpts from our conversation earlier this week in advance of Benoit’s concert at the Lobero on August 25.

Q. You’ve been called the founding father of contemporary jazz due to your early endeavors in the genre. Does that expression fit? In some circles, it’s like smooth jazz is a pejorative.

A. I align myself more with contemporary jazz, because I come from the Dave Grusin, Lee Ritenour, Michael Franks school where the music still had some complexity as well as melodic content. You’d even hear an odd time bar once in a while. Sadly, what it turned into, smooth jazz, does deserve to be pejorative because it got so bad, and a lot of what you hear on radio is wallpaper. What I do is very listenable, but it has musical integrity. I stay close to my [Oscar] Peterson. But if I’m a founding father, I’m just one of them. 

Your long and varied career has veered in many directions: composing film and TV scores, conducting and playing with a number of symphony orchestras, deejaying on a jazz radio show, serving as an educator, not to mention the Peanut music projects. Most musicians don’t wear that many hats, at least not for as long as you have. How do you decide what direction to go in? 

I’ve always had a lot on my plate. It’s my Type A personality; I just love to work. It’s a little less right now, because the youth orchestra I work with just lost its funding. But I’ll probably get something going again at the beginning of the year. And I did just land a new record deal and I’m heading off to Europe in September to record my first all-big-band record. I’m also working on a cello concerto I’ll probably finish next summer. 

I’m a big fan of Vince Guaraldi and his music from the Peanuts TV shows. I know you have orchestrated a lot of his music and also composed for music for the TV specials after he passed away. What drew you to that?

It’s been a part of my DNA going back to when I read the comics as a kid. I really really related to Charlie Brown, because I was depressed and felt like one of those lonely kid losers. It took me a long time to find my own voice. Hearing that first Christmas show was so cool. I wanted to play like that. That’s what inspired me to be a piano player, which changed my life. I was Charlie Brown before I became Schroeder, if I can say that… In 1985, I gave “Linus and Lucy,” which people hadn’t heard as a standalone song, a funk groove, and put it out there, and it was the No. 1 radio hit for quite a while.

What are you planning for the Lobero show?

It’s basically a one-off on our way back from a festival in Los Gatos with the best trio I’ve ever had: Roberto Vally on bass, who has been on a million sessions, and Dan Schnelle on drums, who is a young and sensitive straight-ahead jazz player. It’s a wide variety. We’ll be featuring songs from my most recent record Midnight Rendezvous, a big band song, and some of my standards people expect to hear, including “Kei’s Song,” “Freedom at Midnight.” And I always pay tribute to Dave Brubeck, closing with “Blue Rondo à la Turk,” which is challenging but lots of fun. What’s really exciting is my longtime friend David Pack (of Ambrosia fame), who is now living up there, is going to sit in and do a couple of his hits. He asked me to play the “Candide Overture” by Leonard Bernstein, which I transcribed for solo piano, and haven’t played in years. But it’s the maestro’s birthday (105). So it’s a wide variety. 

An Evening with David Benoit takes place on August 25 at the Lobero Theatre. Visit www.lobero.org for tickets and more information.