The Blue Ox Trio performed a set consisting of both standards by jazz greats like John Coltrane and originals by drummer and bandleader Jack Schabert on Friday night at The Lakely in downtown Eau Claire.

At 21 years old, Jack Schabert is a fourth-year instrumental music education student at St. Olaf College and music tutor, in addition to holding it down on the skins. 

A St. Paul native and current resident of the Twin Cities suburbs, Schabert said he was introduced to percussion in band in the fourth grade, and moved to a drum kit in middle school.

“All the Miles Davis stuff, from the beginning, was something that I was always listening to and trying to learn from,” Schabert said. “And then local people in the Twin Cities. That’s probably the biggest (influence).”

Adam Tucker (40, upright bass) and Tyler Lustek (25, piano) round out the trio, which played multiple sets over the course of three hours at The Lakely, located in the lobby of the Oxbow Hotel. 

The Trio ended their first set with a rendition of “Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars,” a bossa nova standard written in 1960 by Antônio Carlos Jobim. 

The trio shifts between a straight-ahead cover of the song and an improvisational jam that expands the tune’s melodic capabilities and back again multiple times over the course of about 10 minutes. 

Schabert occasionally strikes cymbals with the back of his sticks or mallets, adding texture and dynamic range to each tune.

This is the first appearance of this lineup of The Blue Ox Trio in Eau Claire, and Schabert has only performed here once previously. However, it’s been a long road up to the Lakely concert. 

Schabert said he could relate the story of how he got his first gig in high school, his group at the time also being a jazz trio.

“I said, ‘OK, we’ve got enough material here for about 2 hours of music, let’s email people.’ So we had a list of about 100 restaurants, we emailed every single one and we heard back from, like, 5 and 4 of them said no,” Schabert said.

Schabert added that the restaurant that said yes has been having him back for the last 4 years, playing almost every week in the summers. 

“We just kind of networked from there,” Schabert said. “I was just hooked. I love piano trios, that’s my favorite musical medium, just piano, bass and drums. You can kind of just add anything on to it.”

Piano trios were particularly influential to Schabert when it came to writing the original material performed by the Blue Ox Trio. 

Schabert listed the Chick Corea Trio, the Hank Jones Trio and the work of Pat Metheny as particularly powerful influences on the music he wrote for the Blue Ox’s two studio albums, which he released on Bandcamp.

The Lakely hosts Late Night Jazz every Friday from 7-10 p.m.. 

Check out the Blue Ox Trio on Bandcamp. Jack Schabert can be reached at [email protected].

Denton can be reached at [email protected].