It used to be that if you wanted the pianist at a club to play a tune for you but you didn’t know its name, he might say “hum a few bars and I’ll see if I know it.”
Times have changed now, so even if you hum or whistle and can’t carry a tune, you’re still in luck if you talk to Grant Carvalho.
“Sometimes people will come up with something on their cellphone, and even if it’s not very clear and I can’t hear it too well, I can pick out the melody and figure out the chords,” said Carvalho, a soft-spoken native of Honolulu.
Carvalho, 27, is perhaps the most exciting young talent on Honolulu’s piano jazz scene today. He’s had a longstanding weekend gig at Signature Prime Steak & Seafood at the Ala Moana Hotel and recently began performing three times a week at the new Merriman’s restaurant at Ward Village. He also appears frequently with a trio at Medici’s at the Manoa Marketplace.
He’s a Hawaii product, having studied piano with local teachers from elementary school to high school at Punahou, then getting his bachelor’s and master’s degree in piano at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. He might be one of the few performers in town who can roll with Rachmaninoff as easily as he can groove with Gershwin, or take a Cole Porter tune and morph it into Chopin.
GRANT CARVALHO
>> Age: 27
>> Education: Punahou, UH
>> Favorite jazz pianists: Brad Mehldau, Erroll Garner
>> Performance schedule: Merriman’s, 1108 Auahi St., 3:30-5:30 p.m. Sundays, Wednesdays and Thursdays; and Signature Prime Steak & Seafood, Ala Moana Hotel, 6-9 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays
Carvalho started piano lessons at age 8, taking after his older sister. His sister eventually stopped lessons, but he found his calling while still in elementary school, after discovering his affinity for performing in public. His teacher, Sheryl Akaka, while emphasizing the basics of music and piano technique, also encouraged free play, providing time during each lesson for improvisation.
“She would have me improvise, but only on the black notes,” Carvalho said, referring to the black keys, which form a pentatonic scale — “and since everything sounds good when you play only the black notes, it encouraged me to continue improvising and trying to figure out things myself.”
He would continue more advanced studies with Carolyn Stanton of the Manoa School of Art and Music, where he now teaches, and while attending high school at Punahou, Carvalho formed a jazz ensemble. But one of his primary sources of inspiration back then was videogame music.
“I would loop it, so I could listen to it over and over and pick out the tunes,” said Carvalho, who to this day remains interested in computers and videogames.
He studied with Jonathan Korth, head of the piano department at UH, and also studied composition with retired professors Byron Yasui and Takeo Kudo, both of them experts in jazz and band music but also composers of contemporary music. From them, he developed the discipline and skills to truly “read” music: to see a score and hear the music, fully realized, in his head, or, conversely, hear the music and envision it written on a page.
“I saw them just looking at a score and just nodding along, like they were hearing it. I was really impressed at that,” said Carvalho.
He takes some pride in having achieved what he has in music through passion, interest and practice, but without having what might be considered a “natural gift” for it.
“One thing I’m proud of is that I do not have perfect pitch. I have good relative pitch (the ability to tell the ‘distance’ between notes) now, and I’m continuing to work on it,” he said.
During college, Carvalho became known for adding a twist to the juried performances that piano majors are required to give each year: He’d ask the jurors to give him three notes on the piano – any three notes – and he would improvise a song around them. He did the same at a concert at UH a few years ago, coming up sith a with richly lyrical, architecturally sound piece.
“There’s a lot of things you can do with three notes,” he said. “I try to see what chords use them, or what kind of melody they’ll work in. … Improvisation is basically composition, only you’re doing it at the moment, so it’s harder.”
He’s taken some jazz lessons with local pianist Dan Del Negro, but mostly he works on his own.
While Carvalho takes requests at his gigs, he enjoys the relative freedom of playing whatever strikes him at the moment.
With his talent and hard work, it all comes out sounding good.
“I basically get to practice while I’m working,” he said.
