Jazz luminary Bill Charlap plays the Seasons on Saturday

In 2008, Tony Bennett appears on Elvis Costello's television show "Spectacle," during which Costello asks Bennett -- icon to icon -- to sing a particular song.

Bennett, who lives in that sliver of space where credible jazz and commercially successful records meet, agrees to sing Jerome Kern's "The Way You Look Tonight."

"Before I sing the song, though," Bennett says, "I have to tell you the real reason I'm here tonight is to introduce, even though a lot of people in the jazz world know him ... the wonderful Bill Charlap, right here."

It's quite a gesture by Bennett -- who also calls Charlap the successor to Bill Evans as his era's great jazz pianist -- and it speaks to the esteem that those within the jazz world hold the New York-based pianist. Charlap, who plays The Seasons Performance Hall on Saturday, has attained the stature of his own musical heroes, players like Evans, Oscar Peterson and Jimmy Rowles.

That he has reached such rarefied heights is less surprising, perhaps, when you consider where Charlap comes from. The son of famed Broadway composer Moose Charlap and pop-standards singer Sandy Stewart, Charlap watched a parade of musical luminaries go through his boyhood living room. Music was everywhere in his childhood. He recalls, for instance, being very young and playing piano side by side with Torrie Zito, the man who arranged the strings on John Lennon's legendary album "Imagine." That was just normal; it was only in hindsight that Charlap realized how much musical greatness had surrounded him in his youth.

"As a child, you just sort of acclimate to your environment," Charlap says in a phone interview earlier this week. "It's just the environment you grow up in."

That environment also had the effect of making a career in music seem a real possibility. Professional musicians were not some different species; they were stopping by the house.

"There was never a time when I didn't know that what I wanted to be was a musician," Charlap says.

Given his early immersion in the form, it's refreshing to hear Charlap talk about jazz as something that still affects him deeply. Some musicians that On magazine has spoken with cop to having long ago lost their sense of wonder at music, approaching it instead as a sort of academic pursuit, something that can be deconstructed and analyzed rather than felt. Charlap rebuffs any such suggestion.

"It's always a completely emotional experience," he says. "It's always a mystery. It's always new."

Part of what keeps it that way is collaboration. Charlap and his Bill Charlap Trio sidemen, drummer Kenny Washington and bassist Peter Washington, know each other so well that any of the three can lead the others into new improvisational territory without worrying anyone will get lost.

"It's a gut-level thing," Charlap says. "And it's a willingness to bend toward the sound of the whole group."

Peter Washington won't be here for The Seasons performance because of other commitments. But his substitute, Sean Smith, is an accomplished bassist in his own right, having performed with the likes of Tom Harrell, Benny Carter and Gerry Mulligan.

"We practically grew up together," Charlap says of Smith. "And we've been playing together for years. There's a great chemistry there, too."

Yakima jazz writer Doug Ramsey reveres all three musicians, Charlap, Kenny Washington and Smith. The Seasons performance should be a demonstration of just what an incredibly tight jazz combo sounds like, Ramsey says. It also should be a demonstration of Charlap's imagination and "thorough-going musicianship," he says.

"Bill has a great sense of the history of piano in jazz," Ramsey says. "He refers to all of that when he's playing, when he's improvising. So you'll hear not just references but also the spirit of Bill Evans and Jimmy Rowles."

Which is not to suggest that Charlap's style is derivative, he adds. It's just that, as Tony Bennett says, Charlap is the heir to Evans.

"And he's an original himself," Ramsey says.

* Pat Muir can be reached at 509-577-7693 or pmuir@yakimaherald.com.

If you go

WHAT: The Bill Charlap Trio.

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

WHERE: The Seasons Performance Hall, 101 N. Naches Ave.

TICKETS: $22. Call 509-453-1888 or visit www.theseasonsyakima.com.