Branford Marsalis Quartet
Releseased in March, 2019
Jazzwise Top 10 Releases of 2019
Grammy Nominee for Best Jazz Instrumental Album 2020
YouTube: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mnooUdCwiYxedlDoRiX17D7sV5C0C16MI
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About:
The
Branford Marsalis Quartet announce the release of their new album, The Secret Between the Shadow and the
Soul, on March 1 via OKeh Records, an imprint of Sony Music
Masterworks, and Marsalis Music. Available now to BUY, the new album
finds the celebrated ensemble at a new peak, addressing a kaleidoscope of moods
with inspiration and group commitment.
The quartet that saxophonist Branford Marsalis has led for the past three
decades has always been a model of daring, no-apologies artistry, of
ever-widening musical horizons and deepening collective identity. With
likeminded support from pianist Joey Calderazzo and bassist Eric Revis (each with
20 years of service to the group) and drummer Justin Faulkner (the “rookie” who
has been aboard since 2009), the band has long been a model of how to sustain
and enlarge a musical outlook that is both historically and stylistically
inclusive. Successive recordings have revealed new plateaus, and The Secret Between the Shadow and the
Soul, the band’s first since 2016’s acclaimed Upward Spiral with
guest Kurt Elling and first pure quartet effort since 2012’s Four MFs Playin’ Tunes,
captures a new emphasis on both how to express and how to document the music.
“Working with Kurt for a year and a half took me back to what I learned in
hindsight from my gig with Sting,” Marsalis explains. “Working with a
singer changes you in ways you don’t realize. When I started playing jazz
after my background in R&B, all the possibilities I discovered led me to
play solos that went on and on. Sting said, `No, you’ve got 45 seconds,’
which did more than just cause me to edit. It taught me to focus on the
melodies, to get to the point.”
The gigs that followed Upward
Spiral had a similar effect on the rest of the quartet.
“The guys in the band hadn’t been in thatposition for a long time, either, and
it totally changed how we play. We became tighter, because it was more
about what we could do to support.” As a result, Marsalis realized that
he could no longer be satisfied with the creative tension sparked when new
material was confronted in the recording studio. “I still like the idea
of having everyone bring in whatever they want to bring in when it’s time to
record and seeing what we can develop,” he admits, “but we couldn’t just take
the `jam session’ approach to recording anymore. We had to go out and
work the music.”
So after an initial get-acquainted week of gigs and studio work at the Ellis
Marsalis Center in New Orleans in October 2017, the band hit the road, probing
and absorbing the new material as it toured the world. “In June,” says
Marsalis, “when we had five days off in Melbourne, I asked the guys if they
wanted to have fun or to work. We were ready to deal with the
music.” In the Alexander Theatre at Monash University in Clayton,
Australia,the band documented the seven latest additions to its already
prodigious repertoire.
The result is as complete a picture as one can assemble of the Marsalis Quartet within the confines of an hour. As usual there is compositional input from the veteran members, with Revis supplying the surging “Dance of the Evil Toys” and more tensile yet equally dynamic “Nilaste,” while Calderazzo reinforces the lyrical compositional yin to his virtuosic keyboard yang in “Cianna” and “Conversation Among the Ruins.” In addition to the leader’s own “Life Filtering from the Water Flowers,” with one of his most deeply felt and keenly shaded tenor saxophone solos, there are two of the more challenging jazz jewels of the mid-seventies, Andrew Hill’s “Snake Hips Waltz” and Keith Jarrett’s “The Windup.”
Whether navigating the quirky three-bar phrases of Hill’s piece or the elegant composure of “Cianna,” the rambunctious mechanisms of “Evil Toys” or the haunting ruminations of “Life Filtering,” the quartet generates distinct and unerringly apt sonic profiles. “Sonny Rollins provided the template for playing each piece with a ton of vocabulary and how to use the sound of one’s instrument,” Marsalis notes. “With us, it’s all about sound and the power it has to create emotion. When you deal with sound, you don’t play the same thing twice in a row. You listen to each other, and every song is different.”
Other influences, ranging from European opera and African percussion ensembles to such saxophone beacons as Ben Webster, Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, have shaped Marsalis’s command at non-verbal storytelling. “My approach in both writing and soloing is melodic and rhythmic, with harmony third,” he stresses. “We mold the harmony to the melody, where too many people let the harmony dictate. And we play in the cracks. I want to channel that vibe of all the great music I’ve heard, but to apply my own ideas.”
Marsalis still finds that the perfect vehicle for realizing his goals is his stellar working band. “Some musicians may need to work in different projects to create the illusion of sounding different by changing the context, whereas we are confident that we can adjust our group sound so we don’t have to change the context. What always appealed to me were the great bands, not just the great players who could start and stop at the same time. Staying together allows us to play adventurous, sophisticated music and sound good. Lack of familiarity leads to defensive playing, playing not to make a mistake. I like playing sophisticated music, and I couldn’t create this music with people I don’t know.”
The Secret Between the Shadow and the Soul confirms Branford Marsalis’s vision. It is sophisticated, adventurous and anything but defensive, and it captures a great band sounding better than ever.
Track Listing:
1. Dance of the Evil Toys (Eric Revis) 08:23
2. Conversation Among the Ruins (Joey Calderazzo) 08:46
3. Snake Hip Waltz (Andrew Hill) 05:51
4. Cianna (Joey Calderazzo) 07:32
5. Nilaste (Eric Revis) 10:15
6. Life Filtering From the Water Flowers (Branford Marsalis) 09:00
7. The Windup (Keith Jarrett) 12:30
(Branford Marsalis, soloist; Grammy Nominee for Best Improvised Jazz Solo 2020)
Personnel:
Branford Marsalis: saxophones
Joey Calderazzo: piano
Eric Revis: bass
Justin Faulkner: drums
Recorded May 28 – 30, 2018, at Alexander Theatre at Monash University, Clayton (VIC), Australia
Produced by Branford Marsalis
Recorded and mixed by Rob “Wacko” Hunter
Mastered by Greg Calbi
Review:
If this isn’t a candidate for record of the year from many reviewers, I’ll be very surprised. It’s an object lesson in how an established group can dig deeper into musical and emotional resources than many a short-lived ensemble, however starry the personnel. It’s grounded, harks back to the tradition, looks forward to new ideas, yet has a confident perfection that is extremely rare.
The heart of the album is in the ballad playing. ‘Conversation Among The Ruins’ (written by Calderazzo) has not only a dazzling piano solo but some delicately poised playing from Marsalis on soprano that isn’t afraid to explore beauty and melodic richness. ‘Cianna’, also by Calderazzo, is slowish, but has one of those themes you feel you’ve heard before, it so insidiously becomes an earworm, with Branford on tenor this time. The best ballad playing on the album is in Revis’s composition ‘Nilaste’ which seems to evoke heartbreak and beauty at the same time. Not all the meters or rhythms are straightforward, but so assured is the playing that even the most complex settings sound entirely natural. And just a few bars of the quartet’s version of Keith Jarrett’s ‘The Windup’ is enough to put a smile on one’s face and relive the visceral experience of this band playing live. And within its catchy, funky setting, this track manages to combine moments of improvisational freedom, perfectly demonstrating why this is one of the most compelling live bands on the planet.
Alyn Shipton (Jazzwise)
