When word came out that drummer Brian Blade was about to record as a leader, the anticipation was for something divergent. Given his uniquely slashing drum style and uncanny skills with the cymbals, his quiet, thoughtful countenance, and his capacious resume-including Joshua Redman, Kenny Garrett and forthcoming Wayne Shorter, to Joni Mitchell, Daniel Lanois and Bob Dylan-Blade has developed into an unusual member of his 20-something generation of jazz musicians. What has resulted is a sumptuous impressionistic recording conveyed by a band he aptly dubs a Fellowship.
Earnestly spiritual, though not in an outwardly prayerful sense, Blade discovers music in found elements, in environmental scenes experienced, and in the seeming simplicities of life. The Fellowship includes two saxophones, guitar, piano and keyboard, pedal steel guitar and cameos from Lanois on mando guitar (notable fellows are Myron Walden on alto sax and bassist Christopher Thomas). Blade forges many of the disparate musical elements that have thus far graced his career throughout, and on the track “Folklore” even invokes the Pygmies. Far from your usual debut disc.
Related Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Jonathan Butler: The Simple Life
Jonathan Butler’s optimistic music belies a dirt-poor childhood growing up in a South Africa segregated by apartheid. Live in South Africa, a new CD and DVD package, presents a sense of the resulting inner turmoil, mixed with dogged resolve, that paved the way to his status as an icon in his country and successful musician outside of it. Looking back, the 46-year-old Butler says today, the driving forces that led to his overcoming apartheid-the formal policy of racial separation and economic discrimination finally dismantled in 1993-were family, faith and abundant talent.
“When we were kids, our parents never talked about the ANC [African National Congress] or Nelson Mandela,” he says. Butler was raised as the youngest child in a large family. They lived in a house patched together by corrugated tin and cardboard, in the “coloreds only” township of Athlone near Cape Town. “They never talked about struggles so we never knew what was happening.”
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Harry Connick, Jr.: Direct Hits
Two decades after his commercial breakthrough, Harry Connick Jr. taps legendary producer Clive Davis for an album of crooner roots and beloved tunes
Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro