Belonging (Blue Note)
Branford Marsalis
Released March 28, 2025
Jazzwise Top 10 Albums of the Year 2025
Grammy Nominee for Best Jazz Instrumental Album 2026
AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2025
All About Jazz Best Jazz Albums of 2025
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About:
Branford Marsalis, one of the world’s most preeminent saxophonists, is now being recognized as a musician whose talent knows no boundaries. A peerless instrumentalist and bandleader in the jazz world, recent years have found him performing as a classical soloist with symphony orchestras, composing scores for major motion pictures and Broadway shows, composing a symphony for a full classical orchestra, teaching at universities, and providing artistic leadership at the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. Along the way his work has garnered Grammy Awards, an EMMY nomination, Tony nominations, a Drama Desk Award and a citation by the National Endowment for the Arts as Jazz Master.
Marsalis’ longstanding quartet—featuring pianist Joey Calderazzo, bassist Eric Revis, and drummer Justin Faulkner—remains at what he calls “the top of the food chain,” a description that also applies to the band’s place among contemporary ensembles. Over the course of its life, no other group has matched the Marsalis Quartet’s ability to offer listeners both vibrant original music and creative interpretations of historic masterpieces. For its debut recording for Blue Note Records, Marsalis has chosen to present the band’s interpretation of Belonging, the 1974 album that introduced pianist Keith Jarrett’s European Quartet of saxophonist Jan Garbarek, bassist Palle Danielsson, and drummer Jon Christensen.
Marsalis admits that he was into other music when Belonging was released in 1974. “I was a freshman in high school, listening to R&B,” he recalls. “I didn’t know Belonging existed.” That changed once he shifted his focus to jazz, although he was only familiar with Jarrett’s solo piano music until pianist Kenny Kirkland introduced him to the Jarrett Quartet. “We were sitting on a plane sometime in the eighties and Kenny put his headphones on my ears and played [Jarrett’s 1979 album] My Song. When he tried to take the headphones back after five minutes I slapped his hand away; and when we got to the next city, I went out and bought every recording by that band.”
A similar discovery occurred when Marsalis decided to include “The Windup” from Belonging on his band’s most recent album, 2019’s The Secret Between the Shadow and the Soul. “We were all listening to “The Windup” for the last record, and Revis said that we should just record Belonging, the whole album is so great and we could do things with it. We all liked the idea, and then the pandemic came. When the pandemic ended, we all still felt that yeah, we should do this.”
The quartet applied Marsalis’ previous approach to classics by Charles Mingus, the Modern Jazz Quartet, John Coltrane, and others – neither slavish fealty to the originals nor extreme deconstructions. “On the composition ‘Belonging,’ I clearly played things that Jan played on the record,” Marsalis points out. “I didn’t try to reject the idea when it occurred, but at no point did we plan to consciously pay tribute. I’m always listening to the whole record, not just the saxophone solos, and the most impressive thing about Belonging for me is how it all fits together.”
Unlike Jarrett’s band, which convened for the first time when it recorded Belonging and would only later become one of the signature groups of the 1970s, the Marsalis Quartet can call upon a rare history as a band. Revis joined in 1996, Calderazzo in 1999, and Faulkner in 2009, and their ability to hear and react to each other is unparalleled. Of equal importance to Marsalis is the lessons time has imparted. “The biggest benefit we have is 50 years of information that Keith’s band didn’t have, and our ability to process that shared experience. For one example, when we were about to record ‘Long as You Know You’re Living Yours,’ Justin asked me what our approach would be. I said two words to him, ‘James Gadson,’ and he took it from there. It’s not just knowing the reference, it’s having spent enough time, as Justin has, incorporating different styles of playing. Revis knew what the groove was. When we play it, we bring it more in the spirit of Donny Hathaway Live.”
The knack for respecting sources while producing performances that are completely personal is a hallmark of Marsalis and his band’s approach to all of the music they play. “Learning music is like learning languages in school,” he offers. “Learning in school can just be an academic exercise, which you realize when you go abroad and can’t speak the language. I tell students that the delivery mechanism in music is the simplest system in the world: There are only 12 notes, 12 pieces of data. Miles Davis at any given point in his career was using the same system as Beethoven. It’s not the notes that make music unique, it’s how it sounds.”
Belonging is loaded with inspired performances, from Calderazzo’s opening piano improvisation on “Spiral Dance” through the title track featuring soprano saxophone to the collective rise and fall of the closing “Solstice.” There is also one more “Windup,” this time with vocal punctuation. “We were going to do the whole album and had to include ‘The Windup’ again, so we said ‘one take and that’s it.’ When I quoted the traditional New Orleans parade song ‘The Second Line’ the band shouted ‘yeah,’ which is the proper response.”
Marsalis notes that “The whole purpose of this group is to be more like a chamber group than a jazz group,” and in the process he has taken listeners along without compromising his approach. “All that any audience for any music wants is a great melody and a great accompanying beat” he explains. “It doesn’t really matter where our journey goes, as long as we keep the dance going.”
While such recent efforts as his score for the Bayard Rustin biopic, Rustin, his work on the film adaptation of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and the Broadway musical A Wonderful World: A Louis Armstrong Musical have drawn growing attention, the Branford Marsalis Quartet remains the saxophonist’s priority. “That’s what I do the most” he says, “and when I do other things, I’m always drawn back to it. Everybody in the band shares a musical ideology, and when you have that you have the potential to develop. But to really develop you also have to play a lot. Everybody in the band is on board with the idea that we are actually trying to improvise, and not show off what we practiced last week. Each of us does other things, but when we do we can’t wait to start hitting again.”
The addition of the Branford Marsalis Quartet to the Blue Note roster could not be more fitting. A significant part of the label’s preeminence has been built on classic recordings featuring tenor saxophone, piano, bass and drums by the likes of Sonny Rollins, Hank Mobley, Dexter Gordon, Wayne Shorter, and Joe Henderson. Branford Marsalis, and the quartet he leads, clearly belong.
Track Listing:
1. Spiral Dance (Keith Jarrett) 8:21
2. Blossom (Keith Jarrett) 11:02
3. Long As You Know You’re Living Yours (Keith Jarrett) 8:56
4. Belonging (Keith Jarrett) 7:35
5. The Windup (Keith Jarrett) 12:41
6. Solstice (Keith Jarrett) 14:19
Personnel:
Branford Marsalis: saxophones
Joey Calderazzo: piano
Eric Revis: bass
Justin Faulkner: drums
Recorded March 25-29, 2024, at The Ellis Marsalis Center For Music, by Rob “Wacko” Hunter
Assisted by Justin Armstrong
Mixed by Rob “Wacko” Hunter
Mastered by Greg Calbi
Cover Photography by Yvonne Schmedemann
Produced by Branford Marsalis
Review:
For his Blue Note debut, saxophonist Branford Marsalis and his long-standing quartet—pianist Joey Calderazzo, bassist Eric Revis and drummer Justin Faulkner—hit the sweet spot again and again and again, reinterpreting and re-imagining Keith Jarrett’s epochal 1974 ECM classic, Belonging.
Not only did Jarrett introduce the world to his no-holds-barred fear-no-idea European quartet—saxophonist Jan Garbarek, bassist Palle Danielsson and drummer Jon Christensen—he was also in one of the most creative periods of his decades-long illuminating career. Consider the tense free-wheeling drive of “Spiral Dance” and “The Windup,” the airy lyricism of “Blossom” and “Solstice.” The bluesy gospel lure of “Long as You Know You’re Living Yours” was so strong that Donald Fagen nicked the tune for the title track of Steely Dan’s Gaucho (MCA, 1980). (Jarrett subsequently sued and was added to the songwriting credits.)
Marsalis was totally unaware of Belonging until 1979, but in a validation of the music, it has stayed with him through the years. In 2019, on the acclaimed The Secret Between the Shadow and the Soul (Marsalis Music), the quartet delivered a rollicking “The Windup.” After listening to the music since then and reacting whole-heartedly to a suggestion by Revis, the quartet decided to have a go at the whole album. We now have Belonging circa 2025, and it is everything the original is and more.
Though the sound does not have that gritty ’70s pioneering sound, it does have an immediacy that rivals it, making this Belonging—if not as surprising and groundbreaking as its vaulted ancestor—a hot damn-good time as the quartet breaks out with “Spiral Dance,” of course, and the dance floor has never been so jumpy and full of fancy steps. Calderazzo sets the pace. Revis swaggers in with Faulkner biting at the bit behind him. Enter Marsalis and away the track goes. A high-fiving take if ever there was one. “Blossom” captures the original calligraphy, yet its tone is ripe for any time. Revis and Faulkner bring an all-new bump-and-grind to “Long As You Know You’re Living Yours,” while sax and piano have a field day.
Since the quartet had previously recorded “The Windup,” they decided to hold themselves to one take and it is a whirlwind. Marsalis blows full-on Garbarek. Faulkner and Revis happily rassle with Christensen and Danielsson, creating a rhythmic fervor that Calderazzo, like Jarrett, cannot resist. The collective hush of “Solstice” closes the proceedings as it should, with Marsalis taking command of his rich defining soprano and his henchmen cresting at every turn. So much more than tribute or homage, this Belonging is a work that stands righteously on its own.
Mike Jurkovic (All About Jazz)
