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Home , Adam Rogers (musician), Art Blakey, Benny Green (pianist), Christian McBride, Craig Taborn, Dear Ella

Monterey Festival On Tour 55th Anniversary January 2012

Dee Dee Bridgewater

Over the course of a multifaceted career that has spanned four decades, has risen to the top tier of today’s jazz vocalists, putting her own unique spin on standards as well as taking intrepid leaps of faith in re-envisioning jazz classics. For her latest recording, ELEANORA FAGAN (1915-1959): TO BILLIE WITH LOVE FROM DEE DEE, Bridgewater honors an iconic jazz figure, , who died tragically at the age of 44 a half-century ago.

“This is my way of paying my respect to a vocalist who made it possible for singers like me to carve out a career for ourselves,” says Bridgewater, who performed the role of Holiday in the triumphant theatrical production, Lady Day—based on the singer’s autobiography, Lady Sings the —staged in and in 1986 and 1987. “I wanted Eleanora Fagan to be something different: more modern and a celebration, not a [recording] that goes dark and sullen and maudlin. I wanted the album to be joyful.”

Bridgewater adds that Eleanora Fagan goes far deeper than being a tribute album of retreaded Holiday tunes. “Billie deserves to have her music heard in another light,” she says, “and I definitely didn’t set out to imitate her.”

Key to the fresh approach is pianist Edsel Gomez, Bridgewater’s longtime band mate who wrote new for the 12 songs on the album, including the African polyrhythmic-charged interpretation of “Lady Sings the Blues, “ a reharmonized version of “All of Me” and the gospel-tinged “God Bless the Child.” Says Bridgewater: “Edsel is an extremely gifted, talented arranger with very modern ideas. Edsel has the ability to be modern and work in a tasteful fashion.”

Gomez took on the daunting challenge of bringing new life to the music with enthusiasm. “I listened to everything Billie Holiday ever recorded,” he says. “I let her music speak to me.” He also kept in mind the personalities of the

TEDKURLANDASSOCIATES 173 Brighton Avenue, , MA 02134 phone: 617-254-0007 fax: 617-782-3577 [email protected] www.tedkurland.com all-star band Bridgewater had assembled for the recording: dynamic reeds player , bassist Christian McBride and drummer .

“This was my dream band,” says Bridgewater. “I got to work with these musicians who I’d been dying to play with. I thought, I can’t miss. With this band I can have a hard-swinging, touching celebration of Billie’s music.”

Bridgewater sings into the nuances of such songs as “,” “Lover Man” and “Fine and Mellow” with an allure that’s equal parts sexy, spunky and sublime. “This was the first time when I wasn’t concerned about having a particular sound of voice,” Bridgewater says. “I was just singing from my gut. It was all so swinging and so soulful.”

Other highlights include the haunting “You’ve Changed” with Carter blowing smoky soul to complement Bridgewater’s moving vocals, the spunky “Mother’s Son-in-Law” with McBride dueting with the coquettish singer, and the uptempo “” featuring Nash’s drumming prowess.

Over the course of her career, Bridgewater has paid homage to monumental figures of the music world, recording dedicated Fitzgerald (the Grammy Award-winning , 1997), (Love and Peace: A Tribute to Horace Silver, 1995) and (This Is New, 2002).

But with Eleanora Fagan—the follow-up to 2007’s brilliant Red Earth: A Malian Journey that melded the music of with jazz—Bridgewater delivers one of the most remarkable recording performances of her career. “Dee Dee is a spirited dynamo and a soulful balladeer,” says liner note writer Dan Ouellette. “She sings with a razor-edged voice; she scats with abandon; she makes you cry. She even chokes up herself upon descending into the ghoulish drama of ‘,’ which serves as the album’s poignant finale. She gives a moving read with a sparse supporting her.”

Instead of playing it safe and recreating her performance in Lady Day, on Eleanora Fagan, Bridgewater reacquaints herself with Holiday, shining a new ray of love on the often-misunderstood jazz icon. “I wanted the record to be a collection that would not be like the music of the show,” she says. That philosophy is in keeping with Bridgewater’s approach to all of her projects: “I want to move forward, just as I’ve done with each of my albums. To not go backwards, but progress. Constantly.”

Christian McBride

For his Mack Avenue recording debut, the 36-year-old bassist / bandleader / educator / artistic director / Grammy Award winner CHRISTIAN McBRIDE delivered the remarkable , a 10-track album featuring his new TEDKURLANDASSOCIATES 173 Brighton Avenue, Boston, MA 02134 phone: 617-254-0007 fax: 617-782-3577 [email protected] www.tedkurland.com acoustic jazz quintet Inside Straight, comprised of old friends, pianist , alto saxophonist Steve Wilson and drummer , as well as newcomer vibraphonist , one of McBride’s former students.

Produced by McBride, Kind Of Brown is a collection of hard swing-to-bluesy groove tunes that the leader says he put together to give the members of his new ensemble “something to sink their teeth into.” He adds, “I wanted to present solid melodies with some decent chord changes that could be good vehicles for the guys to blow on.”

While McBride has helmed a longstanding acoustic / electric —label mate and tenor saxophonist , pianist , drummer —the bassist extraordinaire decided to create a new quintet that was focused on playing straight-ahead acoustic jazz. Formed in June 2007, the group made its debut at the Village Vanguard in , marking the first time in 10 years that McBride appeared there as a leader. “For the occasion I wanted to put together a special group,” he says. “I had no intention of forming a future working band, but during that week people raved about the show and kept telling me that the group had to be documented.”

While various labels courted the quintet, McBride decided to hook up with Mack Avenue. “I was not interested in signing an old, classic recording contract,” he said. “But Mack Avenue made it clear that it was not only excited about me joining its family of artists, but also wanted to give me the freedom to be creative, which would be beneficial to both parties.” Recorded in September 2008 at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, Calif., Kind Of Brown stands as McBride’s first album as a leader since his 3-CD Live at Tonic outing for Ropeadope Records in 2006 and his first studio recording since 2003’s Sci-Fi for .

However, McBride has been anything but idle during this period. He’s been active as a sideman, most recently touring with the / John McLaughlin Five Peace Band project (also featuring label mate and either drummer or ). He’s not only developed into a top-tier solo artist who is equally adept on acoustic and electric bass, but he’s also been the go-to bassist, with support duties ranging from and Chick Corea to and .

In addition, he has been at the forefront of jazz education, including serving as an artist in residence at festivals (most recently 2008’s Detroit International Jazz Festival and the ); artistic director at various arts centers and museums (including co-director of the National Jazz Museum in and the creative jazz chair for the ); and as artistic director of the JAS Band Academy (Jazz Aspen Snowmass, Band Edition). TEDKURLANDASSOCIATES 173 Brighton Avenue, Boston, MA 02134 phone: 617-254-0007 fax: 617-782-3577 [email protected] www.tedkurland.com

Kind Of Brown opens with “Brother Mister,” which McBride says is the perfect opening tune for a gig or a record. “The chordal sequence is a basic 12-bar blues,” he says. “I started playing a version of the song with my quartet when we’d have a guest play with us, but it never had a melody. So, for this recording, I put a melody over the chord changes, changed keys from F to E and it came out nice.”

McBride and Inside Straight deliver a buoyant, exciting take on the number, “Theme for Kareem.” “I always had a soft spot for Freddie,” McBride says of the late, legendary trumpeter. “Carl was instrumental in me getting to play with Freddie when I first moved to New York. Carl was kind of like my sponsor. He recommended me to Freddie, who initially felt that an 18-year-old player wasn’t ready for the big time. But he took a chance with me, and it was a great thrill to play with him. I wanted to record at least one Freddie song on Kind Of Brown. I decided to do ‘Theme for Kareem.’ It has a lot of meat on it, and it’s hard because the chord changes go by real quick. It’s a tricky song by a great composer.”

The gently grooved “Rainbow Wheel” is a tune McBride came up with while playing chord changes on the . “Jazz players love playing minor thirds, but I thought, how many songs go up and down in major thirds? So that’s what I did. It reminds me of the way Freddie played. He would have eaten alive a song like this.” The lyrical, slow-tempo “Starbeam” is another song whose genesis can be traced back to the Christian McBride Band library. “I wrote it three years ago, and we played the tune, but I could never find the time to finish it,” he says. “I could never find the end. When I was planning to put the music together for Kind Of Brown, I was inspired to sit back down at the piano to finish this, to play the melody all the way through.”

On “Used ‘Ta Could,” play is the operative word. It opens with a funky acoustic bass line and has an oozing blues-gospel feel throughout. “I wanted to make the guys laugh when they were playing this,” says McBride. “This song is silly, but fun silly. It’s a ¾ vamp that I thought we could have fun on, especially in the middle when we get to deliberately play a little bit sloppy.”

The whimsical “Shade of the Cedar Tree” is a new version of the tune from McBride’s first album, 1995’s Gettin’ To It on Verve. A tune that, according to vibraphonist , “is clearly on its way to becoming a standard.” “I get a lot of requests for this song, and a lot of kids play it in jam sessions,” he says. “But there was a mistake in the original version where tripped over one note in the melody. I figured this was the perfect time to give the tune its definitive performance.”

“Pursuit of Peace” is a tune that Reed brought to the session. “Because all the guys in the band are so creative, I didn’t feel like I had to write everything,” McBride says. “So, as soon as I requested song suggestions TEDKURLANDASSOCIATES 173 Brighton Avenue, Boston, MA 02134 phone: 617-254-0007 fax: 617-782-3577 [email protected] www.tedkurland.com from them, Eric immediately asked me to listen to this, and I loved it. It fit for the album, and it’s not too traditional. Plus, it’s got an interesting bass line. It’s quite involved, which was another reason why I wanted to record it. It put me on the spot. It made me work.”

The other slow-tempo tune on the album is another McBride original, “Uncle James,” which is a tribute to the late pianist James Williams. “This song exemplifies what James was all about,” McBride says. “Young jazz artists have all been taught that we have to write something challenging to be modern, that to be different you have to come up with something new. But James never believed that. He wasn’t out to reinvent the wheel each time he wrote a song. He was all about fine melodies and chord changes. He wrote songs that were pretty. He wrote a song titled ‘Arioso.’ I used the last four bars of his melody in this tune as my tribute to James.”

The tour de force “Stick & Move” opens with bright rhythmic leaps. “It’s a basic blues,” says McBride. “I told the guys, hey, it’s a blues, go for broke. So everyone jumped in and played.”

Kind Of Brown closes with a piano-bass duo on the standard “Where Are You?” It was a tune that McBride’s bass mentor taught him from a Jazz at the Philharmonic concert with . McBride also has a recording of the tune. “I’m always on a quest to find songs that are obscure standards,” he says. “This has a gorgeous melody that’s nice and simple. It’s a great song for a duo. I love duets. Eric already knew this song, so it was a perfect fit.”

Kind Of Brown is one of many projects that McBride has set into motion for 2009, which marks his 20-year anniversary since his arrival on the international jazz scene. Other endeavors include the innovative “Conversations With Christian” interview-duet performance series available as digital downloads culminating into a full 20 song album, plus a summer residency in New York. While the quintet’s performances had been limited to the weeklong Vanguard stint and one-off shows at the Monterey Jazz Festival and in Brazil, McBride and his new ensemble Inside Straight will be on the road throughout the year performing songs from Kind Of Brown.

Benny Green

BENNY GREEN possesses the history of jazz at his fingertips. Combine mastery of keyboard technique with decades of real world experience playing with no one less than the most celebrated artists of the last half century, and it's no wonder Green has been hailed as perhaps the most exciting, hard- swinging, hard-bop, pianist to ever emerge from ’s Jazz Messengers.

TEDKURLANDASSOCIATES 173 Brighton Avenue, Boston, MA 02134 phone: 617-254-0007 fax: 617-782-3577 [email protected] www.tedkurland.com

Born in New York in 1963, Benny Green grew up in Berkeley, California, and began classical piano studies at the age of seven. Influenced by his father, a tenor on the piano, imitating the records I'd been hearing from my father's collection, which included a lot of Monk and Bird… it was a gradual process of teaching myself”. Benny played in school bands before hooking up with Jazz singer Fay Carroll: “That was good training for me in terms of accompaniment and learning about the blues, and she also gave me a chance to play trio, opening for her every night”.

As a teenager he worked with Eddie Henderson, and got some big band experience with a 12-piece group led by Chuck Israels. After his graduation, Benny freelanced around the bay area for a year, and then moved to New York in the spring of 1982. Back in the Big Apple, he met veteran pianist Walter Bishop Jr.: “I began studying with him and he helped point me in the direction of developing my own sound, and he also encouraged me to check out and study the whole scope of history, so I could get a sense of how I was to fit in”.

After a short stint with , Green worked with between 1983 and 1987. Afterwards, at the age of twenty-four, Benny Green he joined Art Blakey's band. He remained a Jazz Messenger through late 1989, at which point he began working with Freddie Hubbard's quintet.

In 1993 chose Benny as the first recipient of the City of Toronto's Glen Gould International Protégé Prize in Music. That year, Green replaced in Ray Brown's Trio, working with the veteran bass player until 1997. From 1997 on, Benny resumed his freelance career, leading his own trios, accompanying singers like Diana Krall, and concentrating in his solo piano performances. As a leader of his own groups, Benny's recording career began with two albums for the Dutch label Criss Cross: Prelude (1988) and In This Direction (1989). In 1990 Green started recording for Blue Note: Lineage (1990), Greens (1991), Testifiyin' (1992), That's Right! (1993), The Place To Be (1994), Kaleidoscope (1997) and These Are Soulful Days (1999). He has also recorded for Toshiba— Funky (1997)—and for Telarc with Oscar Peterson— Oscar & Benny (1997).

In 2000, his debut recording on Telarc Jazz entitled Naturally was released, which featured bassist Christian McBride and guitarist , musicians who have both inspired and challenged him to explore new territory. It was recorded just days after an acclaimed performance at the 2000 IAJE Conference in New Orleans. With the release of Green's Blues, Benny returned to his roots and updated the tradition with an exciting solo collection of jazz standards by , , and George Gershwin, among others, with his highly personal style.

TEDKURLANDASSOCIATES 173 Brighton Avenue, Boston, MA 02134 phone: 617-254-0007 fax: 617-782-3577 [email protected] www.tedkurland.com

2003 marked the release of Jazz at the Bistro (Telarc), a duo recording with guitarist Russell Malone, dedicated to the memory of the late jazz bassist Ray Brown. The Los Angeles Times called the recording “an electric fusing of complementary styles,” and “a musical tête-à-tête between two of the jazz world’s most gifted contemporary artists.” The superstar duo returned a year later with a highly anticipated follow-up, Bluebird, which also arrived to critical success.

Along the way. Benny has appeared on a guest performer on over one hundred (!) recordings, from albums with legacy artists such as: Betty Carter (including Grammy award winner Look What I Got), Art Blakey & , Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Watson, , Diana Krall, and he is particularly featured in Ray Brown's trio series of CD's for Telarc: Bass Face (1993), Don't get Sassy (1994), Some of my best friends … (1994), Seven Steps to Heaven (1995), Super Bass (1996) and Live at Sculler's (1996), to fresh faces, like Japan’s young drum virtuous and Columbia / Savoy artist, , with whom he recorded A Time in New York in 2008.

In 2009, the acclaimed pianist completed a ten-week engagement as the musical director of the Monterey Jazz Festival All Star 50th Anniversary Tour. In 2010, he was a featured performer with Dizzy’s All Star Band, and the fall, embarked on a highly acclaimed Scandinavian tour with guitarist and Oscar Peterson Quartet alumni, Ulf Wakenius. Benny also makes frequent appearances in Japan, where he is often asked to engage on extended tours.

Benny also continues to be a much in demand guest artist, leading repeat workshops and masterclasses at such educational institutions and music clinics as the Juilliard School, Interlochen, the Monk Institute, Eastern Washington State University, Jazz Camp West, Snow College, Centrum and the Brubeck Institute, all of whom host students who express eagerness and enthusiasm with each return engagement.

In 2011 Benny releases a much-anticipated Trio album, with whom he has recorded with Kenny and , and which serves to remind the world that no contemporary jazz pianist owns the trio format like Benny does. 2011 also marks the premier tour of a long developed project, MONK’S DREAM: 50 YEARS FRESH, billed as ‘A Celebration of the Expanding Musical Universe of ’. With MONK’S DREAM, Benny and band pay homage to the legacy and the man that is his first and most significant musical hero, Thelonious Sphere Monk,

A perpetual student of the history of Jazz piano, the pianist mentions Erroll Garner, , Phineas Newborn, and Oscar Peterson as some of his main influences. Benny Green’s approach to Jazz can be resumed TEDKURLANDASSOCIATES 173 Brighton Avenue, Boston, MA 02134 phone: 617-254-0007 fax: 617-782-3577 [email protected] www.tedkurland.com in his own words: “… for myself and a lot of musicians I admire, the main focus is to just swing and have fun, and share those feelings with the audience … and, if I'm able to convey that, then I feel like I'm doing something positive”.

Lewis Nash

LEWIS NASH (born December 30, 1958) is an American jazz drummer. Nash grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, where he was encouraged into jazz by his high school band teacher. By the age of 18, Nash was a first call sideman for visiting musicians to Phoenix, and received the call to move to New York and join Betty Carter's band at the age of 22. Nash became a highly in demand sideman during this period, and since his tenure with Carter, has gone onto record and tour with some of the most important and highly regarded musicians of all time, among them , Oscar Peterson, , Ray Brown, , Horace Silver, , , , Milt Jackson, , McCoy Tyner, , Christian McBride, , , Pat Martino, , Diana Krall, Joe Williams, Nancy Wilson and many others.

Though renowned as a master stylist, particularly in be- bop and post-bop styles, Nash is seemingly at home in a wide range of stylistic territory, including funk, free, and latin based jazz styles, and his versatility has made him one of the most in demand drummers of the past two decades. Nash is known for his seemingly endless depth of melodic vocabulary, drawing from all eras of jazz percussion, while adding his own unmistakably identifiable approach to the construction of his comping figures and soloing. This indentifiable voice puts Nash on a shortlist of drummers of the past 20 years, who have managed to incorporate the important traditions of American jazz music without overshadowing their individuality.

Nash's style can be characterized by a few defining elements. An unrelenting ride cymbal beat, dazzling melodic invention between the snare, toms and bass drum, cymbal crashes which resolve these figures in complex, unpredictable ways, crisp technical execution of rudimental figures, a huge sweeping brush sound, and the use of three toms (10, 12, 14), which give Nash a pianistic range of melodic possibilities. Nash is recognized as one of the foremost brush stylists of his generation. In particular, Nash's recordings with the great pianist Tommy Flanagan display his mastery in this regard.

Nash is also renowned in the community for his passion and dedication to jazz education, and has fostered the careers of a long list of younger players. He is in high demand as a clinician and educator at schools, workshops and major educational jazz festivals worldwide. He formed his own group in the late 1990s and currently leads several groups of varying instrumentation, from duo to septet. TEDKURLANDASSOCIATES 173 Brighton Avenue, Boston, MA 02134 phone: 617-254-0007 fax: 617-782-3577 [email protected] www.tedkurland.com

Nash has made 3 recordings as a leader: “” (1989), “It Don't Mean A Thing” (2003 Japanese import) and “Stompin' At The Savoy” (2005 Japanese import).

Chris Potter

A world-class soloist, accomplished composer and formidable bandleader, saxophonist CHRIS POTTER has emerged as a leading light of his generation. Down Beat called him "One of the most studied (and copied) saxophonists on the planet" while Jazz Times identified him as "a figure of international renown." Jazz sax elder statesman Dave Liebman called him simply, "one of the best musicians around," a sentiment shared by the readers of Down Beat in voting him second only to tenor sax great Sonny Rollins in the magazine's 2008 Readers Poll.

A potent improvisor and the youngest musician ever to win Denmark's Jazzpar Prize, Potter's impressive discography includes 15 albums as a leader and sideman appearances on over 100 albums. He was nominated for a Grammy Award for his solo work on "In Vogue," a track from ’s 1999 album Pink Elephant Magic, and was prominently featured on ’s Grammy-winning album from 2000, Two Against Nature. He has performed or recorded with many of the leading names in jazz, such as Herbie Hancock, , , the , , , , Ray Brown and many others.

His most recent recording, , is the culmination thus far of five years’ work with his Underground quartet with on , on Fender Rhodes, and on drums. Recorded in the studio in January 2009 after extensive touring, it showcases the band at its freewheeling yet cohesive best.

Since bursting onto the in 1989 as an 18-year-old prodigy with bebop icon Red Rodney (who himself had played as a young man alongside the legendary ), Potter has steered a steady course of growth as an instrumentalist and composer-arranger. Through the '90s, he continued to gain invaluable bandstand experience as a sideman while also making strong statements as a bandleader-composer-arranger. Acclaimed outings like 1997’s Unspoken (with bassist and mentor Dave Holland, drummer Jack DeJohnette and guitarist John Scofield), 1998’s Vertigo, 2001’s Gratitude and 2002’s showed a penchant for risk- taking and genre-bending. "For me, it just seemed like a way of opening up the music to some different things that I had been listening to but maybe hadn’t quite come out in my music before," he explains.

TEDKURLANDASSOCIATES 173 Brighton Avenue, Boston, MA 02134 phone: 617-254-0007 fax: 617-782-3577 [email protected] www.tedkurland.com

Potter explored new territory on 2004’s partly electric Lift: Live at the Village Vanguard (with bassist , drummer and keyboardist ) then pushed the envelope a bit further on 2006’s Underground (with guitarist Wayne Krantz, electric pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Nate Smith). As he told Jazz Times: "I've wanted to do something more funk- related...music that seems to be in the air, all around us. But also keep it as free as the freest jazz conception."

He continued in this electrified, groove-oriented vein with 2007’s Follow The Red Line: Live at the Village Vanguard (with guitarist Adam Rogers replacing Krantz in the lineup). Says Potter of the adventurous new path he’s carved out for himself with his bass-less Underground quartet: “There was a point where I felt like the context I had been using before wasn’t quite working to express what I wanted or to move forward in some kind of way. My aesthetic as a saxophonist has always been based in Bird and and Sonny Rollins and all the other greats on the instrument. What I’ve learned from them in terms of phrasing, sound, and approach to rhythm I’ll never outgrow. However music’s a living thing; it has to keep moving. I’ve been touched by many forms of music, like funk, hip hop, country, different folk musics, classical music, etc., and for me not to allow these influences into my music would be unnecessarily self-limiting. The difficulty is incorporating these sounds in an organic, unforced way. It helps me to remember I want people to feel the music, even be able to dance to it, and not think of it it as complicated or forbidding. If I can play something that has meaning for me, maybe I’ll be able to communicate that meaning to other people, and the stylistic questions will answer themselves.”

With the ambitious Song For Anyone (released in 2007 also and dedicated to the memory of ), Potter flexes his muscles as an arranger on original material for an expanded ensemble featuring strings and woodwinds. "That was a learning process," he says of this triumphant tentet project, "because I hadn’t done anything on that scale before. I just decided to sit down and write, and it was extremely gratifying to see how it translated into live performance."

Looking back over his 20 years since arriving in New York, Potter says, “I’ve had the chance to learn a lot from all the leaders that I’ve worked with. Each gave me another perspective on how to organize a band and make a statement. It’s taught me that any approach can work, as long as you have a strong vision of what you want to do.”

His initial gig with Red Rodney was an eye-opening and educational experience for the 18-year-old saxophonist. “I wish I had had the perspective I have now to appreciate what a larger-than-life character Red was.” Potter's years with Paul Motian's Electric Bebop Band represented a wholly different approach from Rodney’s old school bebop aesthetic on stage. “Motian has TEDKURLANDASSOCIATES 173 Brighton Avenue, Boston, MA 02134 phone: 617-254-0007 fax: 617-782-3577 [email protected] www.tedkurland.com really had a big affect on the way that I think about music,” says the saxophonist. “He approaches things from such an anti-analytical way. It’s so different than so many of the other musicians that I’ve had a chance to work with. Motian more relies on his aesthetic sensibility and his instinct. He’s basically just trusting his gut and he’s so strong about it that he can make it work. And it takes a lot of courage to do that.”

From bassist-bandleader Dave Holland he learned about the importance of focus and willpower. "Dave is determined to make his music as strong as possible and present it in the best way," says Potter, who has been a member of Holland's groups for the past 10 years. "Playing with him, you have the feeling there’s this mountain standing behind you that you can completely rely on. Working with him over the years has helped me see the true value of believing in what you’re doing.”

Potter also cites his time on the bandstand with guitar legend Jim Hall as inspirational. “The way that he can be both melodic and sweet and deeply inventive and open-minded at the same time made a big impression on me," he says. Touring and recording with the enigmatic duo of Donald Fagen and (Steely Dan) offered further insights into the artistic process. “They totally went their own way," says Potter. “I have a lot of respect for them and their commitment to their art.”

And Potter has remained committed to his art since his formative years. Born in Chicago on Jan.1, 1971, his family moved to Columbia, South Carolina when he was 3. There he started playing guitar and piano before taking up the alto saxophone at age 10, playing his first gig at 13. When piano legend Marian McPartland first heard Chris at 15 years old, she told his father that Chris was ready for the road with a unit such as Woody Herman’s band, but finishing school was a priority. At age 18, Potter moved to New York to study at the New School and School of Music, while also immersing himself in New York’s jazz scene and beginning his lifelong path as a professional musician.

Now a respected veteran (as well as a new father), Potter continues to work as a bandleader and featured sideman. Surely many interesting chapters await. As his longtime colleague, alto saxophonist-composer Dave Binney, told Down Beat, “Chris is open to anything now. From here on anything could happen.” -Bill Milkowski

Ambrose Akinmusire

By the time the lone standard “What’s New?” arrives with a wink 11 tracks into trumpeter-composer AMBROSE AKINMUSIRE’s tour de force Blue Note debut When The Heart Emerges Glistening, the song’s title has become a

TEDKURLANDASSOCIATES 173 Brighton Avenue, Boston, MA 02134 phone: 617-254-0007 fax: 617-782-3577 [email protected] www.tedkurland.com rhetorical question. The unneeded answer: Everything. Akinmusire has delivered nothing less than a manifesto, a , a personal statement of such clarity and vision that it’s bound to turn heads around towards this startlingly fresh young talent.

Co-produced by Akinmusire and his label mate and mentor , the album’s 12 songs (10 of which were composed by Akinmusire) feature the 28-year-old trumpeter’s young quintet (tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III, pianist Gerald Clayton, bassist Harish Raghavan, and drummer Justin Brown), a close-knit group of longtime friends and frequent collaborators that breathes a remarkable collective identity. wrote that the quintet “seems destined for much wider recognition,” and described their unique sound as “limber, straight-ahead jazz with mystery and pop instincts that gets around most of the old, pervasive mainstream influences, both of playing and bandleading.”

The Los Angeles Times recently named Akinmusire one of their 2011 “Faces to Watch,” and offered this descriptive of the quintet’s recent LA performance: “Akinmusire and his band demonstrated a remarkably fluid, adventurous interplay and patiently imaginative way with melody that sounded as steeped in the music's history as it was hard-wired with the sound of something new. With a chameleonic tone that can sigh, flutter or soar, Akinmusire sounds less like a rising star than one that was already at great heights and just waiting to be discovered.”

The discovery of Ambrose Akinmusire (pronounced ah-kin-MOO-sir-ee) has been a slow and steady process. Born and raised in Oakland, California, it was as a member of the Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble that Akinmusire first caught the attention of a discerning ear. Saxophonist was visiting the school to give a workshop and immediately heard promise in the young trumpeter, eventually hiring him as a member of his Five Elements band and embarking on an extensive European tour when Akinmusire was just 19.

The experience proved life-changing. Coleman—considered by many to be the spiritual godfather of the current creative jazz scene—challenged Akinmusire on and off the stage. “Ambrose, what’s your concept?” Akinmusire remembers Coleman asking him on a train ride through

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Germany. “Concept? I’m 19, I don’t need a concept. It’ll just come one day,” shrugged Akinmusire, raising the saxophonist’s ire. “He really laid in on me. I’ll never forget it,” he recalls. “You’ve got to start thinking about it now,” Coleman told him. “Everything you don’t love, make sure that’s not in your playing.”

Akinmusire took the advice to heart, and returned to his studies at the Manhattan School of Music determined to discover his own voice. “When I got back to school I wrote a list,” he explains. “It was very specific, it had things on it like ‘I don’t want to be confined by my instrument’ or ‘I want to have a sound like a French Horn player.’ It had harmonic concepts on it. I posted it on my wall so every day I was reminded of it. It caused me a lot of trouble because if a teacher told me to do something and it didn’t really fit what was on that list I didn’t listen to them. It really made me learn who I was because I had to defend that every day.”

After returning to the West Coast to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Southern California, Akinmusire went on to attend the Institute of Jazz in Los Angeles, an experience that began to bring his quest into clearer focus. “I went from being the oddball to being surrounded by people who were just like me and having teachers that were stressing [individuality] like Terence [Blanchard], Herbie [Hancock], and Wayne [Shorter]. I learned a lot from Terence. He really got me to be 100% comfortable in the things I was hearing in my head. After the Monk Institute it was just me going for my own sound and my own concept.”

2007 was a pivotal year for Akinmusire. He entered and won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition from a panel of judges that included Blanchard, , Herb Alpert, Hugh Masekela, Clark Terry and Roy Hargrove. That year he also won the Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition and released his debut recording Prelude…To Cora on the Fresh Sound New Talent label. He moved back to and began performing with the likes of , Aaron Parks, , and Jason Moran, taking part in Moran’s innovative multimedia concert event In My Mind: Monk At Town Hall, 1957. It was also during this time that he first caught the attention of another discerning set of ears, those of Bruce Lundvall, President of .

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“I've been following Ambrose for a while, and I believe he is the kind of musician that jazz needs more of,” states Lundvall. “He's finding a very distinctive voice on his instrument, has a fantastic sense of adventure, and is dedicated to pushing the music forward.”

Lundvall signed Akinmusire, and in September 2010 the trumpeter brought his quintet into Brooklyn Studios to begin recording. Bringing Moran on board as co-producer was a natural choice. “Over the years not only has he been a musician and an artist that I’ve looked up to but he’s been one of the most blunt and honest people I’ve ever met in my life, and I just wanted that type of energy in the studio,” explains Akinmusire. “He’s also one of the few musicians that on every record he’s given 100% and that’s what I was striving for. He’s the guy that people of my generation really look up to right now. I think knowing that he was in the control booth made everyone play harder and reach for things that we maybe would not have reached for.”

The album’s opening track “Confessions to My Unborn Daughter” immediately establishes several of the quintet’s hallmarks including their striking juxtaposition of bombast and beauty, with searing solos turning on a dime to reveal moments of touching tenderness, and the profound frontline interplay between Akinmusire and Smith. The way the two intuitively trade lines back- and-forth, finishing each other’s musical sentences, is surely a result of the 12 years that they’ve been making music together. “He and I never have any musical conversations,” says Akinmusire. “It’s amazing, it feels like he’s part of my brain and I’m part of his. I know exactly what he’s thinking, what note he’s going to end on, when he’s going to play something, when he’s going to stop.”

“Confessions” also reveals Akinmusire’s penchant for intriguing song titles, as does the album’s penultimate track “Tear Stained Suicide Manifesto” (which features Moran on piano). The titles are secret clues to elaborate storylines that he constructs as inspiration for his composing process. “I always put the title first before I write one note,” he explains. “I need a whole story to have the format for a composition.”

However, some of Akinmusire’s compositions do have explicit references. “The Walls of Lechuguilla” refers to the extensive cave system in New Mexico known for the rarity and unusual beauty of its geological formations. “Every

TEDKURLANDASSOCIATES 173 Brighton Avenue, Boston, MA 02134 phone: 617-254-0007 fax: 617-782-3577 [email protected] www.tedkurland.com day I practice in front of a documentary because I do long tone for an hour and a half and I have to have something in front of me. This time I was checking out the Planet Earth series on BBC and they went down into this cave that nobody had ever gone into. They shine the light on the walls, and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life, and so I immediately started writing that tune and it came out just like that from beginning to end.”

“My Name Is Oscar” is a powerful piece that features Akinmusire’s spoken voice backed solely by Brown’s relentless drums. Oscar is Oscar Grant, the unarmed 22-year-old African American man who was shot and killed by a transit officer on New Year’s Eve in 2009 in Akinmusire’s hometown of Oakland. “I just want people to know the story. I don’t want it to become this ‘f*ck the police’ anthem,’” he says. “Every time I go back home I’m reminded of it, people still talk about it, it’s still such a big thing because he got off with just two years, he didn’t get charged with murder. It just really resonates with me because I feel like it could have been me or anyone. The piece begins with me observing what happens, then me talking in the voice of Oscar Grant himself.”

“Ayneh (Cora)” and “Ayneh (Campbell)” are two delicate interludes that are dedicated to Akinmusire’s mother. “’Ayneh’ in Farsi means ‘mirror’ but more related to ‘reflection’ and I just wanted to write a piece that felt like an exhale, it’s a relaxing thing,” he says. “Then I flipped the song around, so the first bar I wrote is the last bar, so I flipped the title around and called it ‘Henya,’” which coincidentally in the Hebrew language is a name that translates as “Grace of God.”

As for “What’s New?” it isn’t meant to be entirely ironic, Akinmusire says. “ is one of my favorite trumpet players, and his version of that is just so amazing. So it was sort of a tribute to him, but also just in case you’re doubting that I have any type of tradition, there’s this.”

“When The Heart Emerges Glistening refers to being present, emotionally invested, honest—not exclusively in our art, but in every act of expression,” Akinmusire says in explaining the album’s title. “It’s about parting our chests to reveal ourselves to one another and to ourselves, to reflect honestly the ‘everything’ of us—the ugly, the changing, the vulnerable, the fierce, the solid, the safe. The heart ‘glistens’ because it is wet, it is fresh. With every

TEDKURLANDASSOCIATES 173 Brighton Avenue, Boston, MA 02134 phone: 617-254-0007 fax: 617-782-3577 [email protected] www.tedkurland.com act of expression, it is a newly excavated heart, so that through listening closely, we are ultimately chronicling every present moment, and constantly re-examining our changing selves. In bearing ourselves this way, we connect more deeply with one another. The many sides of the album itself are a testament to our complexity and uniqueness as individuals, and the imperative to bare and explore honestly every coexisting side of us.”

TEDKURLANDASSOCIATES 173 Brighton Avenue, Boston, MA 02134 phone: 617-254-0007 fax: 617-782-3577 [email protected] www.tedkurland.com