Trombonist Steve Turre Features Modern Jazz Luminaries
on Colors for the Masters - Available August 26
on Smoke Sessions Records
Release Performances September 9 - 11
at Smoke Jazz & Supper Club
Trombonist and composer Steve Turre shows off his full spectrum of sounds on his latest album, Colors for the Masters.
The album's ten songs, evenly split between jazz standards and original
tunes that carry the torch for the tradition, offer a dazzling array of
hues played in tribute to and alongside some of the elders that have
inspired Turre. The leader's own trombone virtuosity is only one color
in a palette that also includes a variety of mutes and his wholly
original conch shell artistry.
Colors for the Masters, due out August 26 on Smoke Sessions Records, teams Turre with a rhythm section of legendary elders, each of whom shaped the trombonist's distinctive voice: pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Jimmy Cobb. On four tunes the band is joined by saxophonist Javon Jackson,
like Turre an alumni of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers; and for the
album's final tune, a stirring rendition of Jobim's "Corcovado" on which
Turre shows off his innovative shell playing, virtuoso percussionist Cyro Baptista
also joins in. Together, they pay electrifying homage to other,
departed luminaries like John Coltrane, J.J. Johnson, and Thelonious
Monk.
"These are masters that I've always wanted to play
with," Turre explains. While he has shared the stage with each of them
over the years in various bands and all-star configurations, he says,
"I've never had them play my music to hear what their mastery would
bring to it. I wanted to hear how their interpretations would open up
new avenues of expression to me."
The results shine through in the individual and collective playing throughout Colors for the Masters.
Those avenues open up through the grooving, funky swing that the whole
band brings to the album's opening tracks, "Taylor Made," which Turre
wrote under the blues-drenched influence of two of his mentors, Ray
Charles and Art Blakey. They're evident in the heart-wrenchingly emotive
soloing of Barron on Turre's gorgeous, aching ballad "Quietude," or Ron
Carter's stentorian, bass-register solo on Wayne Shorter's frenetic
"United."
The opportunity for expressiveness that Turre
was searching for is seized through Cobb's whispering, delicate
brushwork on Monk's "Reflections" as well as on the full-throttle swing
and brisk, rapid-fire soloing he unleashes on J.J. Johnson's "Coffee
Pot." You can hear it in Jackson's fluid, cascading lines on "JoCo
Blue," a simmering blues that Turre wrote in tribute to the great John
Coltrane.
Though he knew this veteran group would bring
their magic to any music that he set in front of them, a few of the
pieces were specially written or chosen for the occasion. "Coffee Pot"
was on the program of a J.J. Johnson tribute that Turre led at the
Indianapolis Jazz Festival in 2014, which also included Jackson in the
band. Most obviously, there's "Mellow D for R.C.," a bold mid-tempo tune
penned with Carter's familiar gifts in mind. "What needs to be said
about Ron?" Turre asks rhetorically. "He's a grand master. I was
delighted and thrilled and at the same time humbled to play with him. He
gives you such a foundation."
Turre heaps similar praise
upon his other bandmates. "Jimmy's beat is timeless," he says of Cobb,
best known for his stint with Miles Davis that included the recording of
the landmark Kind of Blue. He also marvels at "Kenny's touch, sensitivity and nuance, and the colors that he plays."
While
he modestly deflects praise onto his collaborators for the session,
Turre himself has long been lauded as one of the modern champions of his
instrument, whether accompanying Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Woody Shaw and
Lester Bowie or playing between the laughs through his 30-plus year
stint as part of the Saturday Night Live
band. On this album he pays homage to one of his idols, J.J. Johnson
("to the trombone what Charlie Parker is to the saxophone") and shows
off his own wide-ranging virtuosity and depth of feeling, wringing
touching melodicism from "When Sunny Gets Blue," navigating intricate
modal playing on the title track, or spinning off darting, barbed licks
on "United" -- a song he recorded with Woody Shaw, but without the solo
spot he typically had on live dates.
Turre's plunger solo
on "When Sunny Gets Blue" not only shows off one of the most beautiful
colors in his vivid musical crayon box, it is in a way another nod to
the continuum of the jazz tradition. While a member of the Thad
Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, Turre found himself playing next to Quentin
"Butter" Jackson, who had taken over the plunger chair in Duke
Ellington's Orchestra from Tricky Sam Nanton. Turre also shows off his
Harmon mute playing on the melody of "Corcovado" and the solo on "Mellow
D for R..C;" his solo on the latter features the cup mute.
Then
there's the conch shells, the instrument that Turre calls "the most
ancient of horns" and that he largely introduced to the jazz idiom. He
shows off his ability to moan the blues on the seashells on Jobim's
classic "Corcovado" to close the album -- even playing two shells at
once, echoing the show-stopping antics of his earliest mentor, Rahsaan
Roland Kirk.
"I'm still trying to grow," Turre concludes.
"I'm very particular about how I present my music. I have a certain
feeling and a certain direction in mind, and everybody on this record is
in the same frame of mind about what jazz is and what this music means
to them."
"Colors of the Masters" was recorded live in New York at Sear Sound's Studio A
on a Neve 8038 custom console at 96KHz/24bit and mixed to ½" analog tape
using a Studer mastering deck. Available in audiophile HD format.
Steve Turre · Colors for the Masters
Smoke Sessions Records · Release Date: August 26, 2016
For more information on Steve Turre, please visit SteveTurre.com
For more information on Smoke Sessions Records,
please visit SmokeSessionsRecords.com
For media information, please contact:
DL Media · 610-667-0501
Maureen McFadden · maureen@dlmediamusic.com
Don Lucoff · don@dlmediamusic.com
Management:
Management Ark · 609-734-7403
Vernon Hammond · vernon@managementark.com
Information and press materials (including album covers, promotional photos and bios)
on all DL Media artists can be found at our website: dlmediamusic.com