JAZZ

Roy Hargrove’s Quintet at the Kuumbwa.
I first listened to Jazz when I was in high school: Ella Fitzgerald, Chick Webb, and Count Basie. Later I listened to Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Rollins and Coltrane, Mingus and Monk, and also to Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry and Cecil Taylor. After that, with free Jazz and electric Pop-jazz, I was kind of lost. Serious traveling also hindered my contact with the further development of jazz.

Meanwhile, since the Nineties, something great has been growing in the old soil of Jazz and is now in full flower. Within the last years I have rediscovered Jazz and have lately gone to live performances with tenor saxophonist David Sanchez, pianists Eldar Djangirov, Brad Mehldau and Hiromi Uehara, and, last night, trumpeter Roy Hargrove.
Though different they have some overall traits in common. They all build on Jazz tradition, play traditional instruments (except Hiromi!) and traditional combos, but their music is enriched by the influences of a variety of other music: African, Latin, Classic, and even Punk. The form is unmistakably Jazz and whether it recalls Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bebop or free Jazz it all comes together in an exiting and ecstatic unity.
The level of musicianship is truly amazing and all instruments are more involved in the whole than was usual in earlier Jazz. What I mean is: there is less of ‘solo with accompaniment’ and more of ensemble playing, balanced like chamber music.
Roy Hargrove now focuses on hard bop and he is a master in his own right. He commands the whole range of the trumpet with clarity and a tone that goes right to the heart.