Jazz Pianists to Relive Key Event at El Matador

Mark Massey says he can vividly recall feelings associated with key events in his life as if they had just happened.

Such as the time Florence Phillips, his fifth-grade teacher at Mark Twain Elementary School in Lynwood, played a Dixieland record in class.

“I can hear the solos. That music made me so happy,” he said.

Then there was the time he was 14 and his mother bought him the 1969 Blood, Sweat & Tears album that featured their hit “Spinning Wheel.”

“It was incredible. It blew me away,” said the artist in a phone conversation from his home in Long Beach. “I said, ‘Listen to that great solo by trumpeter Lew Soloff . . . . Check out those beefy chords. This isn’t rock ‘n’ roll!’ ”

Massey also recalls the considerable pleasure he experienced one summer afternoon in 1989 when he and fellow keyboardist Rob Mullins briefly shared the stage at the Los Angeles Garlic Festival.

“The vibe between us was special,” said Massey, 36, of the day when Mullins sat in for a tune with trumpeter Steve Lowry’s band, of which Massey was a member.

That spontaneous moment led to an enduring friendship. “We talk a lot, turn each other on to gigs,” said Mullins, 34, who has just moved to Huntington Beach, in a separate conversation.

But despite the musical chemistry at that Garlic fest jam, the instrumentalists haven’t appeared together since. That will be rectified tonight at El Matador in Huntington Beach, where the musicians will work with bassist Luther Hughes, the club’s musical director, and drummer Dave Hooper.

Massey and Mullins expect this evening’s performance to have the same “let’s jam” atmosphere that permeated their first meeting.

“We haven’t talked about what we’ll play. We don’t want to spoil the spontaneity element,” said Mullins, who has three albums out on the Nova label.

“My idea,” Hughes said, “is to get players together for an all-star, ‘let’s-play-anything’ kind of session.”

Massey, a 1988 graduate of Cal State Long Beach with a degree in composition, and Mullins, a self-taught pianist who played drums from age 6 until he was 15, have performed with other keyboardists only rarely anyway.

Mullins worked with pianist-singer Diane Schuur at the 1989 Playboy Jazz Festival, while Massey took part in a series of concerts for four pianos--along with Paul Smith, Steve Allen and Pete Jolly--at the La Mirada Civic Theatre in the late ‘80s.

The main reason it’s rare to see two pianists in a band is that the instruments tend to sonically get in each other’s way. If a keyboardist isn’t particularly sensitive to what the other is playing, there can be a lot of “train wrecks”--conflicting ideas played simultaneously, disrupting the overall flow of the music.

Massey and Mullins, without the benefit of much experience in each other’s musical company, say they believe their stylistic diversity will help them to avoid the usual dual-keyboard pitfalls.

“I’m more of a mainstream player, influenced by Bud Powell, Oscar Peterson, Herbie Hancock and Vince Guaraldi,” said Massey, who has played and recorded with violinist L. Subramanium and plays on a group record called “Simply Jazz” featuring guitarist Mike Higgins and drummer Charlie Landis. He also has performed with saxophonists Frank Morgan and Bud Shank, and trumpeter Maynard Ferguson.

“I try to bring a cross section of styles to the bandstand,” said Mullins, a member of the Next Crusade, an outgrowth of the Crusaders that features Crusaders founders Wayne Henderson on trombone and Wilton Felder on saxes. “I mix contemporary sounds with traditional jazz.”

Mullins believes that he and Massey each bring one vital quality to their meeting: an original voice. “Mark definitely sounds like him, he’s not trying to copy anybody,” said Mullins, whose career as a pianist really took off in the early ‘80s in Denver, where he lived from 1971 until 1987, when he moved to Southern California.

“A lot of well-known players sound like so-and-so,” Mullins said. “If there’s anything I never want to be accused of, it’s sounding like anyone other than myself.”

Hughes, who has played with both artists at El Matador and elsewhere, thinks the matchup is on the money. “Rob is one of the most uninhibited cats I have ever played with,” Hughes said. “It’s like he’ll try for anything that comes into his head, and 99 and 9/10% of the time, he’ll make it.

“Mark kills me. He has great ears, great time, accompanies well and plays tremendous lines,” Hughes said.

Massey recalls his first meeting with Hughes as less than ideal.

“I was really nervous, and he was barking chords at me,” Massey said. “He didn’t think I could play at all. Now we get along great.”

* Keyboardists Rob Mullins and Mark Massey play jazz tonight at 8:30 and 10:15 at El Matador, 16903 Algonquin St., Huntington Beach. Admission: free. Information: (714) 846-5337.