Mar 30, 2026 10:30 PM
Flea Finds His Jazz Thing
In the relatively small pantheon of certifiable rock stars venturing into the intersection of pop music and jazz, the…
“Summer on the Plaza,” a free concert series on the Grace Building plaza in Manhattan, will feature the Henry Grimes Quartet on July 17.
Grimes’s musical career has been somewhat of an anomaly. It began brilliantly, with the Julliard-educated bassist laying it down on some 50 albums between the mid ‘50s and mid ‘60s, including those of Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Rollins and McCoy Tyner. But Grimes fell into obscurity, for years working as a manual laborer, after he couldn’t afford necessary repairs for his bass.
Armed with a new instrument—a gift from William Parker—Grimes emerged to begin playing music again in 2003. Since then, he has played and taught internationally, to wide critical acclaim.
His quartet includes tenor man J.D. Allen, trumpeter James Zollar and drummer Newman Taylor Baker. The concert, presented by Brookfield Properties and The International Center of Photography, is a musical salute to African-American heroes and heroines portrayed in the International Center of Photography exhibit “Let Your Motto Be Resistance.”
For more details, visit icp.org. DB
“Cerebral and academic thought is a different way to approach music,” Flea says of his continuing dive into jazz. “I’ve always relied on emotion and intuition and physicality.”
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