More News

It has been a year of variety for the Jazz at Olney series. From the smooth, modern sounds of saxophonist Tim Warfield to Brazilian vocalist Kenia, the venue has presented a jazz lover's sample platter. On Saturday night, the season closes with vibraphonist Chuck Redd. The Silver Spring native will hammer out standards by three of America's greatest songwriters: George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Duke Ellington.

"All three of these composers have written highly complex, sophisticated music," Redd says. "Anybody who has investigated any of the cannon of American popular song will probably have a favorite Ellington tune, a favorite Gershwin tune and a favorite Cole Porter tune. This music is timeless. I hope people will still find ways to make it fresh and transform it. It's not museum music."

Pianist Steve Rudolph, who helped pull Warfield and Kenia down from Pennsylvania, is happy to give the Olney crowd a dose of Redd.

"I've known Chuck for a long time," Rudolph says. "He's just a fabulous player. He was high on my list as far as people to get for the series. I think he'll really go over well with the audience."

Although Redd, now 51, played drums at Montgomery Blair High School, he needed a melodic instrument to earn a music degree at Montgomery College. His mentor at the school, pianist and composer Bill Potts, suggested the vibraphone. The instrument struck a chord with Redd, but he would not explore its boundaries until the late 1980s. Drums remained his passion. In 1981, at just 21, Redd became the drummer for the Charlie Byrd Trio. He moved onto vibes and stayed with Byrd until the guitarist's death in 1999.

"I never did anything but play music professionally," says Redd. "It's all I've ever done. Some of it is good fortune and a lot of hard work. It's all things we've heard a million times about being at the right place at the right time."

His tenure with Byrd took him to "The Tonight Show" when Johnny Carson reigned as king of late night.

"It was very exciting," Redd recalls. "There I was in my early twenties. They actually set me so I was playing in Doc Severinsen's band. It was just such an iconic situation to be sitting in that environment."

By the early 1990s, Redd was in high demand. The late great Mel Torme recruited him to play vibes in his All-Star Jazz Quintet. He was supposed to fill in temporarily, but one night led to five years of gigs.

"I went up to New York, and there was no audition," Redd says. "You just go in and play at night. I really learned the music well so I could nail it even if I had gotten nervous. At the end of that night, [Torme] said, ‘Chuck, can you play at Carnegie Hall with me in November?' I said, ‘Yeah, I think I can do that.'"

Despite his success, Redd resisted the temptation to move to New York. He now lives in Takoma Park.

"I've been all around the world a handful of times," Redd says, "and I've managed to do it all from right here. I do work in New York a lot. On a professional basis, I sometimes see Washington as a suburb of New York City. I've made all kinds of contacts and professional inroads there."

Growing up, Redd was surrounded by music. His father, Kay, passed down his love of masters like Benny Goodman and Sergio Mendes to Redd and his younger brother Robert.

"My father was a big band, jazz and bossa nova fan," Chuck Redd recalls. "He worked for Voice of America and would bring recordings home. He had a lot of music around the house all the time."

Robert Redd, a respected jazz pianist, denies any trace of sibling rivalry.

"It was nice to have someone a little older that I could follow in his footsteps through school and band," he says. "I was a trumpet player at the time. We would have jam sessions at home and played [in] big bands that were certainly more common 25 years ago."

Chuck Redd now splits time between vibes and drums, and plays around town with a handful of groups. At Olney, he will be joined by pianist John Toomey, bassist Victor Dvoskin and drummer Nucleo Vega. Toomey, who chairs Old Dominion University's music department, points out Redd's fresh approach to the vibraphone.

"The first thing I thought when I first heard him play was that I couldn't believe what a beautiful, smooth, liquid sound he gets from the vibes," Toomey says. "I think he has a really unique touch. That's something that impressed me immediately."

With three decades of the vibraphone's cool echo behind him, Redd hasn't tired of the instrument — or his brother. He collaborated with Robert on his latest album "When Redd Is Blue."

"I think what appeals to me about the vibes at this point is ironically, there are inherent obstacles on the instrument when it comes to being expressive," Redd says. "So you have to dig deeper as a musician to bring out the feeling that you're trying to convey."

Chuck Redd performs at 8 p.m. Saturday in Olney Theatre Center's Mulitz-Gudeslsky Theatre Lab, 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Road. Tickets are $26. Call 301-924-3400 or visit olneytheatre.org.