Without a Net is Wayne Shorter’s first Blue Note recording date since August 26, 1970, when he recorded Moto Grosso Feio and Odyssey of Iska. That’s nearly 43 years. Shorter has pursued many paths since then, as a member of Weather Report, and as a bandleader. This quartet was…
Magnetic marks Terence Blanchard’s return to Blue Note Records after an eight-year sojourn in which he wrote and performed large scale works for film, and cut smaller group offerings for Concord. He utilizes his fine live band in the studio here — tenor saxophonist Brice Winston, drummer Kendrick Scott,…
For Robert Randolph & the Family Band, the three year break after 2010’s somewhat stilted-sounding We Walk This Road was well deserved. By Randolph‘s own admission, their 280 date-per-year touring pace had taken its toll: playing music, let alone trying to find time to create it, had become a…
Bassist and composer Derrick Hodge’s life thus far has been spent absorbing, studying, and playing all kinds of music: from gospel and classical to hip-hop, Philly, and neo-soul; from post-bop and modern jazz to cinema music. Live Today, his debut for Blue Note, reflects his career experience — working…
After two solid albums on Motema, both of which earned Grammy nominations, singer and songwriter Gregory Porter makes his Blue Note debut with Liquid Spirit. A singer whose quicksilver vocal style refuses to be caged by either jazz, gospel, or R&B, his warm, inviting baritone utilizes them all when…
Musicians separated by age, style, and demographic, Elvis Costello and the Roots are nevertheless natural collaborators bound by wide taste, insatiable appetite, and fathomless record collections. This is particularly true of Roots drummer/de facto bandleader ?uestlove, the musical omnivore who is the band’s most recognizable member and perhaps the…
Amos Lee’s fifth studio album, 2013’s Mountains of Sorrow, Rivers of Song, features more of the Philadelphia-born singer/songwriter’s country-, folk-, and soul-inflected pop music. The album follows up his acclaimed 2011 release, Mission Bell. Recorded in Nashville with producer Jay Joyce, who has worked with Emmylou Harris and others,…
On Black Radio 2, the Robert Glasper Experiment attempts the near impossible: create a sequel that delivers fully on the promise of its groundbreaking, Grammy-winning predecessor. Glasper’s group — bassist Derrick Hodge, Casey Benjamin on vocoder and synth, and drummer Mark Colenburg — again enlists a stellar cast of…
Total Eclipse was Bobby Hutcherson‘s first recording session with tenor saxophonist Harold Land, who became one of his major collaborators (and a quintet co-leader) during the late ’60s. Land‘s rounded, echoing tone is a nice contrast for the coolly cerebral post-bop that fills Total Eclipse. Hutcherson contributes four of the five compositions (the other, “Matrix,” is…
Nearly eight years after Rosanne Cash last released a set of original songs, 2014’s The River & the Thread finds her in a reflective mood, and just as 2009’s The List saw her looking back with a set of classic songs recommended by her father, the late country legend…