By STEVE PFARRER
Over the years, Alex Smith has played a variety of venues: solo piano in small clubs and hotel bars, modest-sized gigs with his two jazz trios and as part of other combos, and on bigger stages with a larger band.
Then there was the biggest stage of all: Super Bowl 50 in Santa Clara, California, this past February, where he provided piano accompaniment to Lady Gaga as the pop diva sang “The Star Spangled Banner” before 71,000 fans (and another 112 million watching on TV).
But Smith, who has a close connection to the Valley, says he gets particular pleasure in playing some of his own jazz compositions and those of his bandmates when he performs as part of a trio. He’ll do that Friday night when he brings the Alex Smith Organ Trio to the 121 Club in the Eastworks building in Easthampton.
And before he takes the stage, Smith, who’s become a go-to guy for keyboard accompaniment and arrangements in the New York City jazz scene, will also hold a music workshop at Northampton’s Jackson Street School — where his mother-in-law, Gwen Agna, is the principal.
“We go up [to the Valley] as often as we can,” Smith said in a recent phone call from his home in Peekskill, New York, referring to his wife, Nell, and their 4-year-old daughter, Esme. “I love coming up there — it’s a wonderful place to visit.”
And, he noted with a laugh, Agna likes to get as much time as possible with her granddaughter.
Smith, who’s 38 and originally from Ohio — Agna’s birthplace as well — has lived since 2001 in the New York City area, where he moved after studying jazz piano at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music. During his time in the Big Apple, he’s played with many groups and musicians, from the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, to legendary clarinetist Buddy DeFranco, to Max Weinberg, the drummer of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street band.
He’s also had a number of featured solo gigs, including at Symphony Space on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Over the last several years, Smith has added a couple of new names to his list of musical partners: Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett. Through some other gigs in New York, he got to know Gaga and became her keyboardist and arranger as she segued into jazz on her own and then joined with Bennett on their 2014 duet album, “Cheek to Cheek.” Last year Smith toured nationwide and overseas with the two crooners.
Between that and the Super Bowl gig with Gaga, he said, “It’s been quite a ride. We hit all the major jazz festivals and places I’d never imagined I would play: the Hollywood Bowl, Radio City Music Hall. It was really a highlight of my career.”
And, he notes, he had to pinch himself occasionally when he looked up from his piano and saw Bennett, who’s almost 90, standing and singing just a short distance away: “It was kind of crazy to hear that iconic voice and realize I was on the same stage with him.”
Smith began studying classical piano when he was 5 — he actually requested lessons, rather than his parents demanding he learn how to play — and then became hooked on jazz as a young teen, following a school trip to Mexico City where he listened to Mexican musicians playing American jazz classics.
“It wasn’t until much later that I realized they were improvising,” he said.
Smith began studying jazz piano with a professor from the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati when he was still in high school, and as an undergraduate, he became active in that city’s jazz scene. But, he says, he’s always loved other kinds of music like blues and rock, too.
“I still play classical music for my own enjoyment,” he noted. “And the blues has a real connection to jazz — it’s like the grandfather of jazz.”
For years, the piano was the mainstay for his jazz playing; when he plays with his trio, he’s joined by a drummer and bass player. But after moving to New York, he took up the Hammond B-3 organ as well, which first became part of the jazz lexicon in the 1950s and early 1960s through players like Jimmy Smith and Jack McDuff.
As he sees it, the organ brings a funkier vibe and different tonal quality to jazz, while opening up other options for accompaniment. Smith says he plays a bass pedal with his foot on his organ. In his trio, that allows him to replace the bass player with a guitar player, Jesse Lewis, “who can play chords to an organ solo and really fill in the sound. Then he can play leads while I play chords — it gives us great flexibility.”
For Friday’s show at the 121 Club, he anticipates the group will play a mix of jazz classics, some swing and blues — Duke Ellington could be on the set list — perhaps an arrangement of a Beatles song or two, and original compositions of his own and some by Lewis, who’s originally from Boston.
Simply playing with Lewis and his drummer, Tony Jefferson, is a joy itself, Smith says, “because they’re both such great musicians.”
The trio will also play a mix of tunes at Jackson Street School earlier on Friday, where they’ll host master classes for students in grades 3, 4 and 5 in the morning, then play a concert for the school at 1:30 p.m.
In addition to gigging with his jazz trios, Smith also plays regularly in New York with a quintet fronted by an another graduate of the Cincinnati jazz scene, Brian Newman, a trumpet player who’s made a name for himself as the leader of Lady Gaga’s jazz combo.
About six years ago, Smith says, Gaga began sitting in with Newman, whom she already knew, and his bandmates when they were playing a regular gig at New York’s Plaza Hotel; she sang traditional jazz tunes with them, then began performing with them regularly. In November 2011, she invited the band to back her on a televised special on ABC, “A Very Gaga Thanksgiving.”
That led in turn to the album and tour she did with Tony Bennett, on which Gaga and Bennett’s bands played together. Smith says he’s been consistently amazed at the range and versatility of her voice; though she first made her name doing dance-pop songs, he says Gaga can sing pretty much anything.
“She’s the real deal, just an incredible singer,” he said.
In fact, though he was initially feeling a bit stressed at the idea of performing with her at the Super Bowl, once the two of them had worked out their arrangement of “The Star Spangled Banner” before the game, “I knew Lady Gaga was going to absolutely nail it,” Smith noted. “That gave me the confidence to overcome any nervousness.”
As much as he’s enjoyed his time in the limelight — he says he’ll be performing again with Gaga this year on a more limited basis — Smith notes that he also treasures those moments when he steps out from being a sideman.
“To have an opportunity to perform some of my own music is really special,” he said.
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.
The Alex Smith Trio performs Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the 121 Club in Eastworks, 116 Pleasant St. in Eastampton. Tickets cost $10 ($5 for children).