Solo Game (Artwork Records)
Sullivan Fortner
Released November 17, 2023
Slate Best Jazz Albums of 2023
Grammy Nominee for Best Jazz Instrumental Album 2025
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mc064Y0iMp5WNC8_Uv19wV9Vaa0aQoFpM
Spotify:
About:
August 2, 2014, Roy Hargrove’s quintet is at the New Morning, the trumpeter has just changed pianist, after the departure of Jon Batiste he entrusted the position to a young unknown, Sullivan Fortner. Roy’s manager recommends that I pay close attention to him…
That evening I was simply taken by the game full of freshness and surprises of this newcomer on the scene. A few days later my friend the New York pianist Rodney Kendrick spoke to me in the most glowing terms with the affirmation that he was different from all the others of his generation and that I should be interested in it for the impulse label! whose mission I had been entrusted with at the time of his rebirth. The recommendation of Rodney not very customary of the fact as well as my experience of the New Morning were enough for me to call Sullivan and produce in the wake of his first album. His second project will also be for impulse! in 2018. Between this release and 2023 he devoted much of his time to the duo he formed with the great singer Cécile McLorin Salvant. The creation of ARTWORK RECORDS corresponded to his desire to record again under his name and naturally we found ourselves with the one who had become the object of admiration of the whole jazz world.
Sullivan called on one of his masters, Fred Hersh, to make a solo piano recording of standards from the Great American Songbook as well as classics by Stevie Wonder, Randy Weston and Antonio Carlos Jobim. Sullivan’s innovative proposals on this repertoire are often breathtaking as they are surprising and always welcome.
Sullivan wanted to pair this solo piano with another solo project but this time he plays the organ synths, percussion and he even sings there. Another way to be experimental and innovative. For him, these two projects are just two sides of the same coin. He adds to his already iconoclastic career a protean and fascinating work.
Track Listing:
CD1
1. Don’t You Worry About a Thing 3:50
2. I Didn’t Know What Time It Was 9:24
3. Congolese Children 4:39
4. I’m All Smiles 4:29
5. Invitation 4:45
6. Once I loved 6:31
7. Cute 3:17
8. This Is New 5:01
9. Come Sunday 4:37
CD2
1. Power Mode 0:15
2. It’s a Game 5:07
3. Snakes And Ladders 5:28
4. Hounds and Jackal 1:25
5. King’s Table 2:04
6. Stag 1:07
7. Cross and Circle 2:54
8. Space Walk 4:51
9. Valse du petit chien 3:20 10. Fred Hersch, notes on solo 1:56
Personnel:
Sullivan Fortner: piano (Steinway B), Fender Rhodes, Hammond B3 organ, vibes, celeste, chime tree, Moog, vocoder, hand percussion, egg shaker, triangle, vocals, hand claps, shakers, Canopus bass drum, Mongolian gong
Kyle Poole: hand claps (CD2 – 2)
Cecile McLorin Salvant: vocals (CD2 – 3)
Review:
Fortner is best known as Cécile McLorin Salvant’s pianist, but he’s also one of the premier musicians out there: sly, witty, adept in every genre, and adventurous at improvising in them all. This is a two-disc album, each completely different from the other: Solo is single-take excursions in standards by Stevie Wonder, Astrud Gilberto, Ellington, and Rodgers and Hart, played in ways nobody has ever imagined (in a good way), and Game is original, overdubbed experiments teeming, simmering, howling, and purring with multiple keyboards and drums, a chime tree, and egg shaker, all played by Sullivan with zest.
Fred Kaplan (Slate)
