James Witherite is comfortable with improvising, whether it is behind a microphone calling harness races at Harrah’s Philadelphia or in front of a crowd playing jazz.
On Wednesday, he will do both.
Witherite will start his day by announcing a 14-race afternoon card at Harrah’s Philadelphia, then head to Chris’ Jazz Café in Philadelphia to perform with his organ trio. Witherite, who recently released his fourth jazz CD, titled 'Modern Organ Trio,' is scheduled for a 7:00 p.m. set at the club.
The 26-year-old Witherite, who graduated from Duquesne University in 2007 with a degree in composition, wrote four of the six songs on Modern Organ Trio. The idea for the album came over coffee with friend Ken Karsh, who teaches guitar at Duquesne. Karsh, who appears on the CD along with drummer Shaun Chesley, played with organ trio bandleader Jimmy McGriff in the early 1980s.
“We were throwing back and forth ideas and decided to do an organ trio record,” Witherite said. “Being in Philadelphia, I’ve been exposed a lot in the last few years to the organ trio tradition. It made too much sense.”
The trio marks a departure from Witherite’s previous recording effort, which featured a 16-piece big band. That album, titled '+17' and released in 2012, saw Witherite compose six of the nine pieces and play flugelhorn.
“The big band is more of a writer’s playground,” Witherite said. “I’ve got five saxes, four trumpets, four trombones, piano, bass, drums and I’m pretty much writing everything out for that whole ensemble. I’ve done all the hard work before the session even begins. We know what the piece is going to sound like; we know the contour of the piece. We know what is going to happen well enough in advance.
“In a small group setting, especially the organ trio setting, it’s what can we do as players. How well can we communicate in the moment? That’s what we got on a tape with some really nice interplay between the three of us. With the small group, you’ve got the tune and it’s just basically framework. Every performance is different depending on how the musicians want to communicate in the moment.”
Witherite was drawn to music from the age of three, when he found his way to his grandmother’s Wurlitzer organ. He taught himself to read music, picked up the trumpet in the third grade and soon added the piano to his repertoire.
“I learned to orchestrate and arrange and write countermelodies by transcribing the horn parts from old Chicago records,” Witherite said. “I was in marching band, choir; whatever I could get involved with at the time. Everything fed off everything else.”
Witherite’s love of harness racing began when his mother took him to the Meadows, near Pittsburgh, on his 12th birthday. He met leading driver Dave Palone – who today is the winningest driver in North American harness racing history – and was hooked. He was the public address announcer for sporting events in school and in 2006 began announcing races at fairs in Michigan. He has been at Harrah’s Philadelphia full time since 2007.
“Even though my approach to calling a race is more conversational, there are similarities behind the concept of building a race call and building a jazz solo,” Witherite said. “It’s that same concept of spontaneity aided by fluency. The more fluid I am, the more able I am to react to what I see in a race or hear on the bandstand. There is a vocabulary, but it all has to make sense in the context of what you’re doing.”
Witherite, who in addition to his gig tomorrow in Philadelphia will play with a trio at Little E’s Jazz Club in Pittsburgh on Saturday, understandably will take a break from recording after producing two albums in the span of a year.
“The albums need time to sit, they need time to breathe; I need time to sit, I need time to breathe,” Witherite said. “That’s just the natural flow of things. Whenever the music decides to be written again, it will be.”
For more about Witherite’s music and performance schedule, visit his website here. Chris’ Jazz Café is located at 1421 Sansom Street in Philadelphia. The club’s website can be viewed here.
This story courtesy of Harness Racing Communications, a division of the U.S. Trotting Association. For more information, visit www.ustrotting.com.