‘For this record, I took an edible and said, screw it’: jazz pianist …

‘Black music is forward and upward in movement, you know? Never forward or upward,” pianist Sullivan Fortner declares. “It’s a tornado that’s always getting bigger and moving faster,” he adds, whizzing his fingers around with delight.

On a video call between sets at Rotterdam’s North Sea jazz festival, the 39-year-old speaks like he plays, with quirkiness, subtlety and mischief. A…