The whole kit and caboodle

Drummer Eric Harland takes versatility to extremes

August 05, 2011|By Siddhartha Mitter, Globe Correspondent

Eric Harland will play in three utterly different bands at the Newport Jazz… (Michael Vasset)

ERIC HARLAND

At Newport Jazz Festival: Sunday at 1 p.m. (James Farm, with Joshua Redman, Aaron Parks, Matt Penman), 2:20 p.m. (Avishai Cohen’s Triveni), and 4 p.m. (Charles Lloyd’s Sangam, with Zakir Hussain). The Newport Jazz Festival runs tonight through Sunday at Fort Adams State Park. 800-745-3000. www.newportjazzfestival.net. Harland also performs at Regattabar on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $25. 617-395-7757. www.regattabarjazz.com

Any decent investigation of the jazz scene is likely to yield these near-conclusive findings: First, Eric Harland is everywhere. Second, Eric Harland can do anything.

Evidence? Just look at his schedule for the next few days. At the Newport Jazz Festival this weekend, Harland, a 34-year-old drummer with an absurdly lavish body of work, appears in three groups with utterly different sensibilities.

One is Israeli trumpeter Avishai Cohen’s group, Triveni. There’s James Farm, an eclectic song-driven quartet with Joshua Redman on sax, Aaron Parks on piano, and Matt Penman on bass. And there’s Sangam, the pure improvisation trio that joins Harland with two living legends: saxophonist-flautist Charles Lloyd and Zakir Hussain, India’s tabla master.

Then next Thursday Harland is at Regattabar with his own quintet, an intense group with a swirling, searching sound that leaves many song conventions behind. His band has been a bit of a side project for Harland, busy as he’s been working with the likes of Lloyd, McCoy Tyner, Dave Holland, and Terence Blanchard; the SFJAZZ collective; his contemporaries Jason Moran, Stefon Harris, Aaron Goldberg, and many others.

If Harland is in such demand, it’s because his skill, versatility, and personality have sent his fellow musicians searching for superlatives.

“There aren’t many things he can’t do,’’ says pianist and MacArthur Fellow Moran, who has known Harland since high school in Houston. “He’s the textbook case of the new jazz drummer who plays funk, groove, straight-ahead, Motown. Eric likes getting around the drum kit just as much as he likes getting around different styles of music.’’

Pianist Taylor Eigsti, who plays with Harland in both his own and Harland’s group, takes it further. “There’s no one else in the world who can play what he plays,’’ Eigsti says. “He’s so good that you just have to laugh.’’ And Lloyd has said that Harland was sent to him by the spirit of his late friend and collaborator, the great drummer Billy Higgins.

As for Harland himself, he fields all this attention with a kind of gracious simplicity.