Branford Marsalis and Dianne Reeves pay tribute to John Coltrane in celebration of the jazz legend’s 100th that falls on 23 September with Dedicated to You, a new album featuring the acclaimed saxophonist, his long-standing quartet and the celebrated vocalist. ‘They Say It’s Wonderful’ is streaming now ahead of the album’s release.
The record to be issued on Blue Note revisits the six standards from Coltrane’s landmark 1963 album John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman while adding instrumental interpretations drawn from Steepee’s wider catalogue.
Marsalis says the project on a different repertory tack, following on from many years post-Kirkland circa Requiem a pilgrimage even more deeply “lykief” into Jarrettonia, offers an opportunity to celebrate Coltrane’s musical legacy from a fresh perspective rather than retracing familiar ground. Rather than focusing on the saxophonist’s better-known instrumental work, he chose to revisit John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, widely regarded as one of jazz’s defining collaborations between a singer and an ensemble.
Admittedly he’s not the first to do this: Chicago singer Kurt Elling made the best album of his career tackling this material live on a 2009 release. Can the new album be as definitive a rendering shaped by the post 9/11 world that Elling inhabited in our nowadays very different post-Covid disturbed-by-AI-and-strongman- megalomania reality? It differs in various respects as to approach and not just because it’s a studio recording.
The sound is also even part of the zeitgeist rewardingly across the Atlantic on the London live grassroots gigging scene
What goes around… comes around. And recently on the live London scene newcomer “marvellous” Marvin Muoneké impressed in a co-led concert at Cadogan Hall with fellow UK jazzer Mark Lockheart known for his work with Loose Tubes and Polar Bear.
Having a female singer in the vocals role is fresh and unique. It helps that she’s the greatest female jazz singer alive.
Dianne Reeves is mentioned in the list below of this year’s best jazz vocals albums so far as an inspiration, nb she didn’t have a new album of her own in the first half of the year although I enjoyed the retrieval by Arkadia of a slice of archival action (above) accompanied groovily by Billy Childs – the explanation is that she is one of the classic benchmark voices of our age so the thinking springs from that framework and logic.
DR’s equivalent icon of a male jazz singer for our times is the blessèd Gregory whose considerable weepie of note the mother song ‘Good Goodbye‘ for the film Goodbye June this year is among his finest work. It’s like that Latin motto that goes Finis vitae, sed non amoris – the end of life, but not of love.
Although he initially considered working with a male vocalist, Marsalis said the choice became clear after reflection. “When I woke up the first thing I said was ‘Dianne Reeves,’” he says.
Branford, 65, elder brother of Wynton, was born in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, into New Orleans’ celebrated Marsalis jazz family. The three-time Grammy Award-winning saxophonist first came to prominence in the early-1980s with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers before forging one of the most acclaimed careers in modern jazz.
The soprano saxophone player on Sting’s Quentin Crisp “The Naked Civil Servant” tribute ‘Englishman in New York’ (1987) BM is equally at home in classical music, film scoring and television, he has led the Branford Marsalis Quartet for decades, establishing it as one of the genre’s most respected ensembles. His take on Keith Jarrett’s Belonging was one of last year’s top records.
“Today will be a good day – I’m gonna make it that way“: Dianne Reeves with Amen Corner legend Andy Fairweather Low, the great Chris Barber (1930-2021) and Jools Holland in astonishingly rousing form.
Reeves, 69, was born in the motor city, Detroit, and is widely regarded as one of the foremost jazz vocalists of her generation. A five-time Grammy Award winner, a cousin of The Mothers of Invention keyboard genius George Duke (1946-2013), she has earned international acclaim for her interpretations of the Great American Songbook and contemporary jazz repertoire. She also introduced her voice to a wider audience through George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck, for which she won a Grammy Award for the soundtrack.
Reeves brought a lifelong connection to the material. She said her grounding in the Great American Songbook came through working as a teenager with the trumpeter Clark “Mumbles” Terry, who emphasised melody, lyrics and serving each song on its own terms. She also grew up listening to Johnny Hartman, whose recordings were favourites in her family home.
The sessions brought Reeves together with Marsalis’ long-established quartet of pianist Joey Calderazzo – pal Joey’s brother is London scene face & proper drummer Gene who is in Bruno Heinen’s The W – bassist Eric Revis and drummer Justin Faulkner who took on the mantle of Jeff “Tain” Watts and has grown immeasurably in the role in the intervening years.
Reflecting on Coltrane’s influence, Marsalis says the saxophonist’s achievement lay in his command of musical tradition as much as his willingness to extend it. “He didn’t think of songs as ‘vehicles’; he was sympathetic to the songs he played, and that’s our goal, to be sympathetic to the music.”
- Marsalis and Reeves hit the road this autumn for a big tour that takes in the brand new British Airways ARC venue in Olympia on Saturday 21 November as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival. Tickets are available via the British Airways ARC website.
