Flux Music Essentials … [Gunn, Hancock, Roumain, Whalum & Yellowjackets]

Tags

Daniel Bernard Roumain, Herbie Hancock, Jazz, Kirk Whalum, Russell Gunn, Yellowjackets

Flux Music Essentials

Greeting’s jazz lovers, I’m back with another tasty mix of jazz that’s undoubtedly shaken and well stirred from the shelves of the “Flux Music Essentials.” First up, I’ve got the innovative voice of trumpeter Russell Gunn heading the pack, meanwhile the mix thickens with the legendary keyboardist, producer, songwriter and mega-star Herbie Hancock makes his statement with “The New Standard,” also newcomer and extraordinary violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain is ready to rock your world. The exceptionally soulful Kirk Whalum on saxophone arrives with “Gospel According to Jazz,” and finally the beloved Yellowjackets featuring guitarist Mike Stern is the icing on the cake of this infallible groove called jazz.

Russell Gunn - Ethnomusicology Vol1

Russell Gunn -|- Ethnomusicology 1 – [Atlantic / Wea, 1999]

Crossover recordings run an extraordinary risk of failing, or at least flailing. Trumpeter Russell Gunn’s avoids the former fate and, by and large, also escapes the latter. Consider this recording a sibling to his other early-1999 release, Love Requiem, which toes a straight-ahead acoustic jazz line while Ethnomusicology does something entirely different. Gunn’s ensemble crosses the wires of hip-hop and postbop, coming up with a slinky funk feel in spots (witness the opening groove bit with the Parliament-style pinched vocal welcoming listeners to the CD) but keeping a strong neobop improvisational vibe heavy and pervasive.

Gunn’s band gets great mileage from DJ Apollo’s turntables, especially on “Shiva” and the soul jazz-touched “Sybil’s Blues,” and pianist James Hurt plays fleet acoustic harmonies and uses the Fender Rhodes to its fullest ethereal potential. The horns are all at top capability, too, with trombonist Andre Heyward turning in splay-toned solos and saxophonists Gregory Tardy and Bruce Williams providing a nice one-two power beside Gunn’s confident, sharp-minded brass. —Andrew Bartlett

Russell Gunn | Plays Miles

Tags

African American, Jazz, Russell Gunn, Trumpet

Russell Gunn | Plays Miles – [HighNote Records, 2008] – Weekend Spin

Russel Gunn, Plays Miles

Excellent album…a must for all Miles Davis fans, who also are familiar with Russell Gunn’s work. In my opinion, Russell Gunn’s music fosters a conversation between a type of street poetics that converge with a Jazz aesthetic; as is evident in his 2008 release _Love Stories_. To speak of a political economy of Black music, in the specific context of Gunn’s music, is to speak of an dialectical interplay between sound technologies and Black music (Gunn’s utilization of technology as a means of innovation, as opposed to utilizing technology to compensate for a lack); it is to speak of a type of “sonic Afro-modernity” that bespeaks and embodies a rich legacy of Jazz trumpeting that converges with Gunn’s self-fashioning sound (one that is marked by a persistent critique of Western modernity); and finally, it is to speak of Russell Gunn’s Ethnomusicological journey (exterior as well as interior) that informs and laces each of his recordings, never letting in challenging the listener as well as his band members. With all due respect to Gunn and the fellow musicians, this recording is necessarily politicized. I think all “Black artistic expression” is necessarily politicized, given the historically marginal status that, by and large, Black artistic expression continues to occupy.

Make no mistake about it, this particular album is the music of Miles Davis. —Kelvin Monroe

..:: Source: Amazon.com ::..