Customer Reviews

Black Hope

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The reviewer that wrote "every other track is supermarket noise" did not look very deep into this brilliant recording. Every single note of every single track is deeply thought out, and proves that Garrett can play any style just as well or better than any other sax player.

He shows his incredible viruosity on the first track, tacit dance. He displays his sensitivity on the second track, Spanish-Go-Round. It only gets better from there. This is hard-bop at its greatest. Only ignorance could mistake this man's music for "elavator noise." Listening to this recording 100 times, one can hear something new each time. The incredible thing is the amount of interaction and intellectual content that these men put into each track. Though these pieces may be "groovy", Garrett plays them as though he is playing "Giant Steps" and "Niama." This is truly one of his best recordings.

Kenny Garrett has been thrust to the top of the jazz world through his recent successes, including SONGBOOK and PURSUANCE:THE MUSIC OF JOHN COLTRANE. Many critics overlook this album as one of his great successes. BLACK HOPE was my first exposure to Kenny, and he has been a great influence on my playing ever since. Kenny burns up the track with legend Joe Henderson on COMPUTER G(check out the trading four section on this one)and BYE BYE BLACKBIRD. I also love his original TACIT DANCE and he rolls off an unbelievable solo on JACKIE AND THE BEANSTALK. A must have album for any Kenny fan.

Kenny Garrett is a young sax player that is changing the way the sax is played. Nobody played like him before. He puts his own style in everything. His playing outside has undeveloped jazz ears confussed but for the true jazzman his solos are stunning. He is quite diffrent in that he varies from typical jazz. His title song is a party beat, while his final song Last Sax (named so because he was the last sax to play with Miles Davis) is a bluesy "Davis" feel. This is certainly worth listening to!!

Kenny Garrett's most UNDERRATED album, Black Hope offers a tinge of what Garrett is about: Scorching blues-derived sound over various jazz and R&B rhythms. This is Garrett AFTER Miles and Blakey...

"Black Hope" was an excellent contribution to jazz in the 1990s, and holds up very well today. The energy between Kenny Garrett and Joe Henderson is powerful, the compositions are strong, the group dynamic is first-rate, and-- very remarkably-- we get to hear what happens when Kenny Kirkland brings his electric keyboard sounds into a jazz small group situation (although most of the record still features his acoustic piano). I think the results are great: the textures on the more R&B-oriented material are beautiful, and the percussive, subtle synth sounds on the funkier material grooves hard, as does the whole band. Brilliant album, essential for a fan of either Kenny.

3 1/2

Nice mix of easy listening ballads to Coltrane-esque hard-bop with a little funk in between, Black Hope might try be too many things to too many people for compositional supremacy but this saxophonist delivers beyond decently in all these Jazz sub-genres.

Kenny is probably the greatest alto saxophonist on the scene today. Whatever genre he enters from burning Giant Steps to gut bucket funk, he plays with absolute authority, ownership, and creativity. This recording also features great peformances by the late Kenny Kirkland, an absolute monster on the piano, and the late saxophone master Joe Henderson.

Truly, the further jazz travels down the decades, the more records are released that do not demand to be heard. Why buy an Antonio Hart or a Roy Hargrove CD when you can put on Miles or Coltrane? Even true for Garrett himself - why buy 'Persuance,' with the availability of Coltrane's output? So for me, it's all about the tunes and the solos. Black Hope contains a heavy does of both. Kenny Kirkland is in top form and Garrett even outdoes himself on tunes like 'Black Hope.' There is a fire that was captured in this recording - all the players sound positively incandescent. In a sea of irrelevant CD's, you'll find yourself putting this one back in time and time again. Check it out.

i bought this cd after reading some of the reviews and was greatly disappointed. i almost gave up on kenny on the spot, because this cd is so SMOOTH. i mean that in a bad way, as if kenny g(arrett) was trying to be kenny g(orelick).

but luckly for me, i bought SONGBOOK soon after, and was very happy. i don't know, if you like the real kenny g, do the jazz world a favor and buy this cd instead. but if you like MODERN JAZZ, stuff that builds off of everything that came before it, try out one of his other ones.

One every second title is great jazz music, the other is great supermarket/elavator noise.
If your CD player has a program function, or if you are more open minded (or just patient) than me : buy this CD : Computer G or by by blackbird are just great jazz music.
If not, forget it and go for more homogeneous CD : Persuance from Kenny Garrett if you like Jazz, and any album from Kenny G if you own a supermarket or operate an elevator.