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Blindfold Test: Buster Williams
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Jimmy Greene will release Flowers—Beautiful Life, Volume 2 on Mack Avenue Records April 28.
(Photo: Jimmy Katz/Courtesy of Mack Avenue Records)Three years ago, Grammy Award-nominated saxophonist, composer and arranger Jimmy Greene recorded Beautiful Life, a tribute to his 6-year-old daughter Ana Márquez-Greene, who was murdered along with 19 other children and six educators on Dec. 14, 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
In the shadow of such unspeakable tragedy, Greene continues to kindle his daughter’s inextinguishable light. He will release Flowers—Beautiful Life, Volume 2, his second album for Mack Avenue Records, on April 28.
Beautiful Life, Greene’s acclaimed Mack Avenue debut, was a poignant recording that honored his daughter’s love of singing with a program of jazz, spirituals, contemporary Christian music and ballads. The album, said Greene, fulfilled a goal to “reflecting the way that Ana lived” through his music.
Volume 2 reveals yet another side of Ana, said Greene, serving to illuminate his daughter’s love of dance with a kinetic, groove-filled program comprising 10 original compositions—including two with lyrics by Greene—and his arrangement of the song “Something About You.”
Greene is accompanied on six of the album’s tracks by Love In Action, a unit comprising veteran musicians Renee Rosnes on keyboards, John Patitucci on bass, Jeff “Tain” Watts on drums and Rogerio Boccato on percussion. On three selections, Mike Moreno lends his lyrically potent guitar to the mix. He is joined on the rest of the album’s tracks by his longtime quartet—with keyboardist Kevin Hays, bassist Ben Williams and drummer Otis Brown III.
Though largely infused with danceable rhythms and buoyant melodies, Greene noted a more serious compositional bent to his new recording, which he contributes to his doctoral studies at Manhattan School of Music, where he matriculated in the fall of 2013 after recording Beautiful Life.
“Although I’ve done a lot of writing, I’d never stepped back and studied it in a directed way,” Greene said. “I needed something to focus on other than my grieving process—some musical goal to work towards.”
Guests on the album include vocalists Jean Baylor, who applies her mezzo-soprano to Greene’s lyric on the song “Someday,” and Sheena Rattai, best known for her association with the folk trio Red Moon Road. Rattai contributes a powerful reading of lyrics on the album’s title track, which refers to a book of hand-drawn flowers that Greene found in Ana’s playroom when he returned home after a long vigil on the day she was killed.
“It was Christmas time, but it wasn’t supposed to be a Christmas gift,” he says. “She just wanted to do something nice for Dad. She’d normally do things like that for no other reason than to brighten someone’s day. That is indicative of who my little girl was.” DB
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