Tracks streaming so far ahead of the full release on 28 March include ‘Spiral Dance’ and the title track ‘Belonging.’
Incredibly powerful and totally faithful to the classic ECM Keith Jarrett album from 1974 Belonging it’s also so moving.
The album famously includes a track that inspired Steely Dan’s ‘Gaucho’ – ”Long As You Know You’re Living Yours’ that Jarrett took legal action over and to which his name was later added in the credits.
Jarrett has suffered significant health issues in recent years and only he and Norwegian icon Jan Garbarek remain from the original band, with bassist Palle Danielsson passing away last year and drummer Jon Christensen deceased in 2020.
Note well the pianist in the hot seat Joey Calderazzo does not make the mistake of playing like Jarrett. But his own imaginings and interpretative resource is perfect to draw upon.
First time we heard JC in the flesh was up in Glasgow at a concert in the Fruitmarket when he was playing with Michael Brecker.
To understand what he does here on an album that is full of tendresse listen to Brecker album Tales from The Hudson (1996) and particularly what Calderazzo contributes to the Don Grolnick piece ‘Willie T’ and you start to get a glimpse of his sound in embryo. Oh and how simpatico what Branford does it is clear when tuning in again to the much missed Brecker. A match made in heaven that album and this, before journeying still further back timeline wise to the even more jaw dropping ur text itself.
On Requiem in the 1990s Marsalis on ‘Lykief’ (eg ”like Keith”) long ago signalled his love of the band variously also referred to as the European Quartet and here fast forward to this new 2025 release fully out on Friday he goes completely long form with close colleagues bandmates Calderazzo, bassist Eric Revis and drummer Justin Faulkner.
I met Branford around then (1999) having heard ‘Lykief’ and the rest of the album on some pre-release burn or other that Sony were shopping around at the time to a few of the interested jazz hackerie. The office didn’t even have internet – I used to go to a cafe in Dean Street, Soho on the way home to dial into the web to catch up as best I could. We still used floppy disks quite a bit.
I think it was the Landmark Hotel in Marylebone that the interview took place for a cover story in Jazzwise, and have heard him live a few times. It was on the South Bank first time around, about nine years earlier, at the beginning of the 1990s when Tain was still in the band. It’s taken me years to get used to Justin Faulkner as his replacement but yeah I’m down with that sound now.
Marsalis also did a great gig years later (with Faulkner at the kit) in the Barbican when he blew me away playing quite beautifully ”the Hungarian suicide song,” ‘Gloomy Sunday.’
Back to the present what a way to start his tenure on Blue Note Records, the greatest label in jazz.
It’s the 64 year old New Orleans tenor and soprano saxophonist’s first record in some 5 years – last we heard from him he was playing trad for the Netflix version of the 1980s August Wilson play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom which had a storming treatment of Ma’s ‘Hear Me Talking To You’ complete with incendiary vocal from Maxayn Lewis on it among other gems.
So tackling Belonging is a complete contrast. Let’s hope there will be regular output from him of this calibre for the label.
Branford’s approach is at all times reverential but there is nothing safe about what’s here.