Sullivan Fortner, Leave That In There Review

Leave That In There: Be Open to the Engagement of Sullivan Fortner

by Nolan DeBuke

Sullivan Fortner’s playing has the kind of technical abundance that can easily become the subject of a review. The speed, independence between the hands, harmonic command, rhythmic flexibility, and range of keyboard color are all immediately apparent. But on Leave That In There, virtuosity is not the most interesting thing about Fortner’s style. More revealing is the way he makes his style so engaging as a legible listening experience.

Fortner establishes ideas clearly enough that they can survive transformation and development. A phrase may return with a different contour. A rhythmic figure may migrate to another instrument. Blues, gospel, swing, or contemporary straight-eighth motion may appear in altered harmonic or textural form. Even material from Fortner’s own recorded past can re-enter the present without sounding preserved in amber. What gives the album coherence is the listener’s ability to recognize this identity through the duration of the performance.

As for the broader frame of Leave That In There. The album draws on memory, family history, spiritual traditions, and Fortner’s relationship to New Orleans, but it does not treat memory as nostalgia. Instead, the past becomes active material, available to be reshaped without losing its meaning.

“Number 3” offers a piece associated with Lawrence Williams and Marcus Belgrave, and Fortner’s treatment reveals just how much of a pianist’s identity can emerge through interpretation. Before the melody settles into view, Fortner establishes character through rhythm: strummed piano strings, pedal tones articulated with deliberate pulse, developing to moving counterpoint, and inner voice-leading.

When the lyrical melody arrives, the surrounding textures behave like independent instrumental parts arranged around it. They add motion, color, and harmonic detail without obscuring the central line. That balance between activity and clarity is one of Fortner’s defining strengths.

The solo preserves the same flow as ideas are developed. Driving single-note passages build toward sharply articulated rhythmic figures that function almost like cadential punctuation. One idea gathers momentum, arrives, and clears space for the next. A rhythmic phrase can initiate another build, expanding into increasingly lyrical or harmonically active material before returning to stronger rhythmic definition.

Fortner does not alternate between lyricism and rhythm as though they were opposing poles. His lyricism is shaped by rhythm. The accents tell the listener where a phrase lives and how it moves, even when the surface becomes elaborate.

On “Aerobatics Pt. 2,” Fortner’s technique serves development, engaging our listening attention. A phrase may begin as a pickup gesture and land at a clearly perceived place in the measure. When the idea returns, Fortner alters its melodic contour or level of activity but preserves enough of its rhythmic placement for its function to remain recognizable.

Fortner first establishes where an idea belongs. Then he changes what happens inside that space. Because the listener has already learned something about the material’s shape and placement, variation registers as development rather than disruption. The music can become increasingly intricate without losing its thread.

Synthesizer colors broaden the palette without changing the underlying musical identity. Rhythmic definition remains strong. Melodic shapes stay clear enough to follow. Harmonic movement retains a lyrical quality even as the keyboard language expands. Each pass through the form can introduce a different emphasis while remaining connected to information already established.

This is where Fortner’s formidable technique becomes meaningful. His facility gives him more ways to alter an idea without severing its relationship to what came before.

That principle expands from pianist too. On “Aria II,” Fortner establishes the piece with driving rhythmic figures, and bassist Tyrone Allen II and drummer Kayvon Gordon enter with an immediate understanding of that language. The trio moves between contemporary straight-eighth propulsion, Latin-inflected motion, and swing while maintaining its forward direction. The shared language is rhythmic before it is anything else.

A figure introduced in Fortner’s improvised right-hand line can retain its character when Gordon carries its rhythmic profile into the drums or Allen augments it in the bass. That makes the ensemble interaction easy to follow.

“Aria II” also revisits material from Fortner’s earlier Aria. The title signals continuity, but the performance is not interested in reenactment. Older material enters a new rhythmic, harmonic, and ensemble environment.

The principle operating within individual phrases now extends across Fortner’s own history: something can return changed and still remain itself. This is where Leave That In There showcases Fortner’s command of jazz history, gospel feeling, blues vocabulary, contemporary harmony, rhythmic displacement, electronic color, and trio interaction.

He gives the listener landmarks. A rhythmic placement becomes familiar. A melodic shape establishes itself. A harmonic color acquires a function. An instrumental gesture becomes part of the ensemble vocabulary. Once those identities are clear, Fortner is free to stretch them.

That freedom is the connection to what came before remains audible. The album’s concern with memory follows much the same flow. Memory does not preserve experience unchanged. It reshapes and recolors it while retaining the connections that allow the past to remain meaningful in the present. Fortner’s playing makes that process musical.

On Leave That In There, Fortner establishes musical ideas that we can follow. The technique is formidable. The greater achievement is that we never lose the engagement thread.