If every New Orleans kid grows up in a houseful of music, the sheer variety heard in his home enabled pianist Kyle Roussel to architecture a distinctive personal style. His precocious talent, listening in all directions and deep training bring him to Saratoga Sunday for its Jazz Festival; training that included what Art Neville called the “secret groove.”

Kyle Roussel. Photo provided

“They all were into listening to music but it was all different types,” said Roussel of his family from New Orleans Monday. His father liked straight ahead jazz. “I didn’t like it, but I still heard it.” His mother preferred old school R&B and funk, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. “Oddly enough,” Roussel noted, his grandfather liked the Beatles, BeeGees and Beach Boys. “Whether I liked it or not, I knew all those songs.”

Most useful of all, career-wise, “My grandmother was heavy into Gospel, so I knew every Mahalia Jackson song…as a teenager,” he said. “All that came in handy,” he said. “When I was 19, I went to Europe for the first time doing a Mahalia Jackson gospel tribute show.” Altogether, “I went all over with musical influences when I was coming up, whether I liked them or not.” Born in 1988, “my own music was rap and hip-hop” – but soon all music was his own.

“I started off playing classical (piano) at age 9 and playing in church at 12, and I got to NOCA (New Orleans Center for Creative Arts) around 15,” he said. “I didn’t want to do any more Chopin and Beethoven, so that was really when I started jazz.”

Back when he’d started piano, “I was in the (school) marching band, playing the drums,” winning spots in the State Honor Band and the Junior Philharmonic. “There wasn’t any piano in the symphonic and the concert band and the marching band, so I grew up playing the drums in those bands in school.”

Playing piano in church, starting at 12, he earned $100 per service. “That’s, like, rich for a 12-year old!” – four or five services a Sunday. He started playing clubs in his mid-teens while studying jazz at NOCA with bassist Chris Severin, who played Albany’s Alive at Five with the Neville Brothers. 

One day a fellow student said, “Mr. Severin, I’m not going to be in class next Sunday because I’m going to Japan.” Roussel said, “As a 15 year old kid, your mind just explodes! So I can play music and go to Japan and make money?”

This revelation may have lingered in his exploded mind as he sidestepped a possible career detour. Intrigued by design and fashion, “I wanted to go to school for architecture and I showed up the first day” (at the University of New Orleans), thinking he’d minor in music.

He auditioned, that first day, and was told, “We won’t pay for you to be an architect, but we’ll give you a full, paid scholarship to be a musician. It was at that point that I became a musician and haven’t looked back since.”

However, he did scan his past to report, “I think there have been countless signs in my life since then that – ‘You’re supposed to be a musician…You were put here on this earth for that and this is supposed to be your profession.’”

Right place, right time. 

At 23, he scored his first album credit, of 48, with the Headhunters, touring often with them, and with the Preservation Hall touring band. He’s recorded and performed with various Marsalises and other artists on SPAC’s Jazz Festival past and present including Ana Popovic who plays this Saturday. Credits also include the Soul Rebels who sold out Caffe Lena last Sunday, and Irma Thomas who returned the favor, singing on Roussel’s Grammy-nominated “Church of New Orleans” album, his third.

“My album features about 37 different New Orleans musicians,” said Roussel, name-checking singers Irma Thomas, John Boutte, Ivan Neville and Erica Falls. Falls will perform with him Sunday at SPAC, along with drummer Peter Barnado and bassist Nick Salcido, all New Orleans residents since Salcido moved down from Philadelphia.

“The first third is usually the trio,” Roussel said of his show. “Then Erica will come on and sing, and I might play a song solo. It will be mostly originals and mostly the music from my latest album…maybe one solo song but I’ll also be putting a personal spin on some jazz classics or maybe a cover song by the Beatles just to throw in a little bit of this and a little bit of that.”

Roussel’s other regular drummer is Herlin Riley, whom he credits with teaching what Art Neville calls the “secret groove.”

“I learned from some really great musicians,” he said gratefully, noting Riley, Zigaboo Modeliste and Shannon Powell. “They are masters of groove. A lot of times, it’s what they didn’t play that made the music groove so much.” 

Playing in church, he said, “doesn’t call for that.” He said, “Sometimes you’ve got to flow in the spirit, in the spirit of the music. Most of the time, it’s what you don’t play that makes the impact, more than what you do play. There’s a lot of power in the silence. I learned how to do that from some great masters.”

“The drummer is the most important member of the band,” Roussel said when I noted his groove examples were all drummers. “He’s really the conductor, he determines the energy. I’ve been fortunate to learn from some really great and legendary drummers.” 

He said, “I was very fortunate to have the type of musical education that I had,” citing formal classical training, then playing in church with “some guys who were really great musicians but they didn’t read any music, they didn’t know any theory.” For them, “It was all based on feeling and based on the spirit and the religion and them being self taught.” 

After noting NOCA training in jazz, he summed up. “Whatever I do will have some jazz influences, some gospel influences, some classical influence, some R&B influence, some New Orleans influence – whatever I play, whether it’s the Beatles or (Professor) Longhair – you’ll probably hear that in there.”

“Up until I was about 19 or 20, (different musical styles) were different arenas,” he said, so he’d play them differently. “At a certain point I think you practice enough and you learn enough and you have your own life experience that you’re able to put your own spin on it.”

That was his breakthrough. 

“As I developed that, it all became the same. It’s all spiritual to me, and it still has the same effect on people. My church members love my albums just as much as people who are atheists.”

“It’s just going to be me, wherever I am,” he said.

Kyle Roussel will be at SPAC’s Saratoga Jazz Festival presented by GE Vernova on Sunday at the Charles R. Wood Discovery Stage from 1:10 to 2:10 p.m.

Roussel has played in 48 states and more than 50 countries and may have played Saratoga but doesn’t remember. He’s sure this is his first here, billed under his increasingly well-known name.

Set times (artists, lineups and set times subject to change)

Saturday – Gates open at 10 a.m. 

Amphitheater Stage

12-1:15 p.m.: First Meeting featuring Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Chris Potter, Larry Grenadier & Eric Harland

1:45-3 p.m.: Terri Lyne Carrington + Social Science

3:30-4:45 p.m.: Cécile McLorin Salvant

5:15-6:30 p.m.: The Dip

7-8:15 p..m.: Miles Electric Band: Celebrating Miles Davis’s Centennial

9 p.m.: Patti LaBelle

Charles R. Wood Discovery Stage

11 a.m.-12 p.m.: Brass Queens

12:20-1:20 p.m.: Avishai Cohen Big Vicious

1:40-2:40 p.m.: Tyreek McDole

3-4 p.m.: Bill Frisell Trio featuring Thomas Morgan & Rudy Royston with special guest Gregory Tardy

4:20-5:20 p.m.: Orrin Evans Trio featuring Luques Curtis & Mark Whitfield, Jr.

5:40-6:50 p.m.: Ana Popovic

Singer Patti LaBelle Headlines Saturday. Photo provided

Sunday– Gates open at 10 a.m.

Amphitheater Stage

12:15-1:30 p.m.: Lakecia Benjamin

2-3:15 p.m.: Christone “Kingfish” Ingram

3:45-5 p..m.: Dianne Reeves

5:30-6:45 p.m.: Cimafunk

7:15 p.m.: The Revivalists

Charles R. Wood Discovery Stage

11:45 a.m.-12:45 p.m.: Skidmore Jazz Institute Faculty All-Stars Celebrate John Coltrane’s Centennial featuring Jimmy Greene, Clay Jenkins, Steve Davis, Dave Stryker, Miki Yamanaka, Todd Coolman, & Quincy Davis

1:10-2:10 p.m.: Kyle Roussel

2:40-3:40 p.m.: Sasha Dobson

4:10-5:10 p.m.: Alexa Tarantino Quartet

5:40-6:55: p.m.: Eddie 9V

The Revivalists Headline on Sunday