Joshua Redman’s latest album just announced is a full-length tribute to Sonny Rollins. The saxophonist conceived the project immediately after the icon’s passing. On board are Christian McBride, Larry Grenadier, Marcus Gilmore, Kevin Hays [whose Live at the Stone is album of the week on marlbank at the moment], Peter Bernstein, Chris Potter, Cécile McLorin Salvant and Gabrielle Cavassa.
The introductory track is a hard-swinging version of ‘Grand Street’ from Sonny Rollins and the Big Brass (MetroJazz, 1958 – an album produced by expat Brit Leonard Feather) and Marcus Gilmore plays drums where his grandfather Roy Haynes handled the original role in a neat bit of dynastic symmetry in the casting.
Born in Berkeley, California, 57-year-old Redman – who has an interesting collaboration with Cory Wong around on release at the moment – grew up under the heavy musical lineage of his father, Dewey Redman well known for his work with Keith Jarrett’s American Quartet whose sound Potter, the Bad Plus and Craig Taborn toured this year. Joshua attended Berkeley High School and later graduated summa cum laude from Harvard, deferring Yale Law School after winning the 1991 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition (now the Hancock).
Over a three-decade + career, his elastic, neo-bop versatility and commanding melodic lines have anchored landmark albums like the big selling gloriously positive Wish, absorbing MoodSwing, and his recent Blue Note releases after a long spell on Nonesuch that garned such gems as a collaboration with the Bad Plus and saw the reunion of his 1990s Moodswing band rewardingly reassembled. Redman’s robust yet accessible approach has left a clear imprint on the next generation of players. He notably serves as a key stylistic touchstone and collaborative éminence grise for major contemporary figures like Chilean tenor Melissa Aldana to be inspired by – she traded intricate tenor dialogues with him as part of JR’s 2025 release Words Fall Short that proved one of last year’s best jazz releases.
The full album release date of If Ever You Would Leave Us (We Play For Rollins) is to be issued by Universal owned Blue Note Records – the greatest label in jazz history and still worthy of that claim all these years on since beginning as a boogie-woogie loving outfit set up by Jewish-German émigrés in 1939 – on 20 November.
