The Life and Death of Austin Peralta
On the last night of his life, pianist Austin Peralta sat in on a show at Little Tokyo jazz joint the Blue Whale and played, as he always did, as if his life depended upon it. The 22-year-old son of skateboard legend Stacy Peralta had been gigging since he was 12 — including a star turn at the Tokyo Jazz Festival at 15, which signified the arrival of a musical force. But Peralta’s power had of late reached an apex. As part of Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder label, the composer was at the forefront of a movement bringing together jazz, hip-hop and electronic music. Peralta, as much as any young musician alive, held in his hands the promise of making jazz relevant to a new generation. “Who’s to say that punk rock is more hard-core than jazz?” he said in an interview last year with L.A. Record. “It’s just not true.” The last song Peralta played that night, Nov. 20, 2012, was Charles Mingus’ “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.” He tore into the tribute to jazz great Lester Young, for which Joni Mitchell later wrote lyrics. (“You know someone great has gone/The sweetest swinging music man…”) Natasha Agrama, who was singing, later said Peralta’s playing on that piece left her fundamentally altered. “I was…
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