Herbie Hancock, who influenced Mr Glasper, was so impressed with his approach to music that he hired him to produce his next recording. He also performed with Roy Hargrove, a Grammy award-winning trumpeter known for his boundary-crossing ways, and has recorded with Kendrick Lamar, a popular rapper. Besides listening to acoustic jazz as a youngster, he grew up in America’s Bible belt, playing gospel music at Baptist churches in Houston, Texas.
Mr Glasper was destined to fuse musical influences. “If you don’t want jazz to change, you are putting a pillow over its face, and it’s going to die,” says Mr Glasper, whose acclaimed recording, “Black Radio” became a marker for its genre-defying blend of jazz, rhythm-and-blues and rock. Other jazz musicians such as Michael League, the bandleader of Snarky Puppy, and Robert Glasper, a pianist, believe that the current movement is giving jazz a shot in the arm. Some occasionally wander into the audience while playing. Tokyo Chutei Iki from Japan created a buzz beyond Asia with its restless ten-person (or sometimes more) baritone saxophone-only group.
ADHD, a band from Iceland, found fans in faraway places by weaving rock influences into its compositions featuring saxophone, organ and guitar. Maurin Auxéméry, a programmer for the Montreal festival, says that London has emerged as a hotbed for edgy jazz artists such as The Comet Is Coming. While New York and New Orleans remain established centres for jazz, new voices can emerge from just about anywhere. Snarky Puppy, a quirky Grammy award-winning instrumental ensemble, incorporates funk and electronica into the jazz in its music. Makaya McCraven, an experimental Chicago-based drummer, makes some recordings by stitching together pieces of past live performances. Vijay Iyer, a pianist and composer who was DownBeat magazine’s top jazz artist of 2012, 20, shines in acoustic jazz settings but also excels at electronic music and collaborates with string quartets, film-makers and poets. YouTube and streaming services such as Spotify can often wield more influence than radio in shaping a musician’s exposure to music. Today’s nonconformists and mavericks, though well grounded in jazz’s history and repertoire, also incorporate elements of hip-hop, rock or classical music into their works. But rebels have always emerged to create new strains of improvised music. Along the way, some purists scolded experimenters for straying from well-established categories. After originating from the streets and clubs of New Orleans in the late 1800s, the art form produced subgenres such as Dixieland, Afro-Cuban jazz, swing and bebop. Jazz is evolving with the help of a new breed of musicians who are creating an innovative sound that challenges convention and defies categorisation. More important, Mr Leavers adds, is the group’s goal: like a comet it “travels through distant galaxies exploring musical concepts”. The trio calls its music “apocalyptic space funk”. Halfway through the show, some entranced listeners rose from their seats and danced to a tune perfect for a rave. At the Montreal International Jazz Festival earlier this month, the fiery saxophone of Shabaka Hutchings, Dan Leavers’s pulsating synthesiser and Maxwell Hallett’s arresting percussion dazzled an audience with its mash-up of jazz and cosmic sounds. “JAZZ isn’t dead,’’ Frank Zappa once said, “it just smells funny.” If he were around today, Zappa might point to the music of a London-based trio, The Comet Is Coming, with its curious scent.
0 kommentar(er)
