The Long Way Home
Charles Chen
The Long Way Home is a 2026 jazz piano album by Bay Area pianist Charles Chen, recorded live in New York with legendary rhythm‑section veterans Bill Crow (98) on bass and Steve Little (91) on drums, plus guitarist Félix Lemerle. Cut at Brooklyn’s Bunker Studio in August 2025 and released on Cellar Live on June 19, 2026, the 14‑track, 51‑minute record moves through a set of standards and songbook gems—from Oscar Pettiford’s Laverne Walk and Johnny Green’s You Turned the Tables on Me to Sam Cooke’s You Send Me and a Duke Ellington medley of Prelude to a Kiss / I Got It Bad / Sophisticated Lady—framed by Chen’s swinging, straight‑ahead piano and Lemerle’s warm, Grant Green‑ish guitar. The playing is relaxed but deeply seasoned: you hear a century of jazz history in the way Crow and Little shape time, push and pull phrases, and make every tempo feel like a comfortable walking pace.
Halfway through, though, the album changes shape. After a run of quartet performances—including Dream Dancing, Squatty Roo, On the Alamo, and Poor Butterfly—the music yields to short spoken‑word interludes where Crow and Little share memories of their lives on the bandstand, from working with Sam Cooke and Gerry Mulligan to encounters with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Art Tatum, and Ellington himself. These “Origins” and “Orchestra Years” tracks turn The Long Way Home into more than a live date: it becomes part concert, part road‑trip documentary, part oral history, a quiet celebration of unsung sidemen who helped shape iconic recordings but rarely stood in the spotlight. Chen, a 38‑year‑old software engineer‑turned‑pianist, uses his rhythmic finesse and broad command of swing and bebop vocabulary to bridge generations, offering a record that feels both lovingly old‑school and gently forward‑looking in the way it centers listening, storytelling, and the long arc of a jazz life.
The Long Way Home
Charles Chen
The Long Way Home is a 2026 jazz piano album by Bay Area pianist Charles Chen, recorded live in New York with legendary rhythm‑section veterans Bill Crow (98) on bass and Steve Little (91) on drums, plus guitarist Félix Lemerle. Cut at Brooklyn’s Bunker Studio in August 2025 and released on Cellar Live on June 19, 2026, the 14‑track, 51‑minute record moves through a set of standards and songbook gems—from Oscar Pettiford’s Laverne Walk and Johnny Green’s You Turned the Tables on Me to Sam Cooke’s You Send Me and a Duke Ellington medley of Prelude to a Kiss / I Got It Bad / Sophisticated Lady—framed by Chen’s swinging, straight‑ahead piano and Lemerle’s warm, Grant Green‑ish guitar. The playing is relaxed but deeply seasoned: you hear a century of jazz history in the way Crow and Little shape time, push and pull phrases, and make every tempo feel like a comfortable walking pace.
Halfway through, though, the album changes shape. After a run of quartet performances—including Dream Dancing, Squatty Roo, On the Alamo, and Poor Butterfly—the music yields to short spoken‑word interludes where Crow and Little share memories of their lives on the bandstand, from working with Sam Cooke and Gerry Mulligan to encounters with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Art Tatum, and Ellington himself. These “Origins” and “Orchestra Years” tracks turn The Long Way Home into more than a live date: it becomes part concert, part road‑trip documentary, part oral history, a quiet celebration of unsung sidemen who helped shape iconic recordings but rarely stood in the spotlight. Chen, a 38‑year‑old software engineer‑turned‑pianist, uses his rhythmic finesse and broad command of swing and bebop vocabulary to bridge generations, offering a record that feels both lovingly old‑school and gently forward‑looking in the way it centers listening, storytelling, and the long arc of a jazz life.