Jazz pianist Elew’s electrifying set at Cliff Bell’s

Sometimes at Cliff Bell’s, the jazz gets drowned out by the clink of forks on plates. That’s usually on the weekend date nights, when fur coats and suctioned-on dresses dominate the wardrobe.

But on Thursdays, Cliff Bell’s is for jazz lovers. The real heads, if you will. It’s the first night of the weekend run. The musicians sprawl out a bit more, experimenting, figuring each other out, getting ready for the weekend warriors.

It’s less busy. There are diners at tables, sure, but the best seat is at the bar. It’s relaxed, more casual. There’s a handsome older man in a suit at the bar. There’s a young European tourist in a windbreaker at the bar. There’s me in a t-shirt at the bar. 

When the band strikes a particularly fascinating motif or unleashes a righteous solo, the crowd doesn’t hold back. There’s hollering. There’s hooting. There are shouts of “c’mon!” and “god damn!” 

That felt constant during Elew’s Thursday night opening set (he’ll be here Friday and Saturday performing two sets each night). The whole room was captivated by him and his band, with Detroit’s own Louis Jones on the drums and Jeff Pedraz on bass. Pedraz tells me after the show that they haven’t played together in years. You’d never guess by the chemistry this trio already has on the opening night of their run on a sleepy, freezing Thursday in Detroit.

“I’ve never seen someone play the piano like that,” my friend comments. 

It’s his first time at Cliff Bell’s, a jazz club that dates back to the 1920s. It still has all that Art Deco charm, too. Bringing someone here for the first time is like guiding a religious pilgrimage. It’s an honor, really.

I’ve never seen someone play the piano like that, either. So much intensity, so much spirit, so much control amongst the alternating fury of mashing keys or lightly tickling them to create the same spiritual effect of a harpist gently plucking strings.

When Elew really let loose during a sprawling, 20-minute take on John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things,” he looked possessed, like watching someone speak in tongues at a Baptist church.

“And I’ve got a nice rum and Coke over here, another one of my favorite things,” Elew says in the mic.

“I’ve never seen someone make the piano look so small,” my friend comments.

Elew is working the piano like a trinket, reaching inside and bending the piano strings to give a muted, electronic-esque sound to his take on “Heartbeats” by the Swedish electronic duo The Knife.

That’s the wild thing about Elew, a.k.a. Eric Robert Lewis. He opens his set with Sonny Rollins, takes you on a third-eye-opening journey through Coltrane’s best-known tune, stops off for a bit of pop music before performing Wynton Marsalis’ “Delfeayo’s Dilemma.”

By the end of it, I realize I’ve just witnessed one of my favorite jazz sets of all time on a sleepy, freezing Thursday. Sitting at the bar with a friend and a bunch of strangers, all of us in awe of what we’ve just taken in. There for the music and only the music.

Every person I see today and this weekend, I’ll be saying, “you’ve got to go see this guy down at Cliff Bell’s.”

“Ryan Patrick Hooper goes to…” is published by WDET in partnership with Midbrow.