Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Southern California Fires Hit the Jazz Community
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
Branford Marsalis’ latest project, inspired by Harlem Renaissance artist Romare Bearden and featuring the Branford Marsalis Quartet, Wynton Marsalis, Doug Wamble and Harry Connick Jr., was released Sept. 9 on Marsalis Music.
Produced by Branford, Romare Bearden Revealed comes just in time for the beginning of The Art of Romare Bearden, a retrospective that opens Sept. 14 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (the first major retrospective of its kind to feature an African-American) and travels to San Francisco, Dallas, New York and Atlanta during 2004 and 2005. Bearden became jazz fan and a contemporary of jazz musicians during his youth in Harlem in the ’20s and ‘30s, and his art has since been used for albums by Charlie Parker, Donald Byrd, Wynton Marsalis, Sonny Fortune and Robin Eubanks.
Marsalis, on tenor and soprano saxophones, along with pianist Joey Calderazzo, bassist Eric Revis and drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts, recorded all new arrangements attempting to create aural impressions of Bearden’s images.
Songs on the album include Ellington’s “Slappin’ Seventh Avenue With The Sole Of My Shoe” with a rhythm guitar added, Wynton’s “J Mood” with the trumpeter as guest, James P. Johnson’s “Carolina Shout” performed with Harry Connick Jr., a live performance of Jelly Roll Morton’s “Jungle Blues” by the Marsalis Family, Tommy Ladnier’s “Steppin’ On The Blues” and a recent Watts composition “Laughin’ And Talkin’ (With Higg),” an homage to Billy Higgins with Wynton as guest.
Branford and Wamble contributed new compositions to the album, “B’s Paris Blues” and “Autumn Lamp,” respectively. The latter expounding on Bearden’s rural influences from time spent with his family in North Carolina throughout his life. A 1950’s piece, “Seabreeze,” is revived by Marsalis with original lyrics by Bearden.
Album annotator Robert O’Meally says that Romare Bearden Revealed “challenges hearers to see the music [and] viewers to hear the paintings.”
For more information on the album, visit www.marsalismusic.com or www.branfordmarsalis.com
For more information on Romare Bearden, visit www.beardenfoundation.org
Gerald and John Clayton at the family home in Altadena during a photo shoot for the June 2022 cover of DownBeat. The house was lost during the Los Angeles fires.
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