Contemporary Jazz

Branford Marsalis

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 15, 2000)
• Original Release Date: August 15, 2000
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B00004W5AU
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #86,317 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Branford Marsalis's aptly titled Contemporary Jazz is a survey of jazz happening as the 21st century rounds the bend of its first year. The mostly bop and postbop music is certainly rooted in jazz's known traditions, but Marsalis's quartet isn't burdened by the past (as the raucous cover of "Cheek to Cheek" attests). Marsalis starts the album with the accessible but shifty "In the Crease" and moves from there to the elegiac "Requiem," which smolders with dark fire. Things really take off at the album's centerpiece, "Elysium." Here, the band--pianist Joey Calderazzo, bassist Eric Revis, and drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts--test their mettle as they break free and stretch out, turning rhythms and melodies inside out over the song's 16 minutes. Perhaps the most interesting of the tracks is Tain's "Countronious Rex," where the quartet seamlessly shifts between gospel, blues, and jazz with offhand grace. Giving a fine overview of jazz and its many forms, Marsalis and company succeed in creating a vivid musical compendium. And they do it with a flair that, like Marsalis's playing, is searching and articulate. --Tad Hendrickson

From Jazziz
For the past few years Branford Marsalis has been telling anyone who will listen that he's not exactly proud of some of the music he put out in the 1980s and early '90s. It was learning time, he says. The recordings were less his heart and soul and more a chronicle of practice-room exploits. The music simply wasn't all his. He talks about the years spent walking in the recorded footsteps of the masters, says he knows now that it takes time (decades even) to get past the imitative phase of jazz discourse, blames in part those who marketed him and other youngsters as fully-formed artists. Even then, he knew that regardless of the attire, there are no shortcuts on the path to mastery.

It's an unusual apologia in this age of carefully calibrated image - the cynical might even read it as another deft spin of marketing. Which it well could be if there wasn't so much evidence, in 1999's Requiem and this boldly titled followup, of Branford Marsalis' maturity. Something profound is going on in his thinking; it's as though he's broken through the conceptual and technical walls that once confined him to discover, quite unexpectedly, a realm of sensual riches that offer all kinds of ways to nourish the spirit. Contemporary Jazz is an account of a 39-year-old's transition from head to heart, from deliberate learning to more innate trusting of reflexes. Its brainy moments (like the demanding odd-meter form of "In the Crease") are never just exercises: Through them, Marsalis and his accomplished trio - drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts, pianist Joey Calderazzo, bassist Eric Revis - balance precise carving work against headstrong flying leaps, ferocious arguments against gorgeous ornamentations.

For this band, history is an asset, not an albatross. Compare the version of "Cheek to Cheek" with any recent treatment of any standard from any artist of Marsalis' generation. Listen to the abrupt stops and the unified lunges, the way Marsalis wrestles with the slap-tonguing aura of Sonny Rollins and the intervallic mischief of Don Byas, the moments when the time gets snarled and then springs magically back into place. What you hear isn't homework - it's something vital and irreverent, something that happens only when you move away from the microscope.

Marsalis is playing for keeps now, with a newly refined, rail-straight tone and an immediacy he's brought to many recent live performances but hadn't successfully captured in the studio. He exhausts the challenges of his structures rather than simply outlining them, and yet never gets so deep into the math that he loses the rhythms of daily life: his "Requiem" is a gorgeous, yearning meditation played out in spellbinding rubato; his "Countronious Rex" melds sullen blues with happy-feet gospel with hinky little red-herring phrases that throw things out of whack. And after he's said his piece, along comes Calderazzo, doing bebop contortions for a few choice bars, framing the collective bursts of "Tain Mutiny" in solid block chords and primary colors that build on Marsalis' moves while sending the music into completely different directions.

There are political statements embedded in everything these days - in the distinctions between "contemporary jazz" and the other kind, in the development and assertion of individual identity. No one of his generation has had to grapple with these things quite the way Branford Marsalis has - his definition of contemporary jazz, full of impish irreverence and driven by unique personal presence, offers a contrast to the outlook of fastidious scholars that prevails elsewhere. Having been in the eye of a media storm, having survived to find his own voice because of (or, more likely, in spite of) his early musical environments, Branford suggests that more than doctrine and academic mealymouthing is necessary for further evolution. He's copping some old attitude and hitting some new notes, and his attempts to bridge the storied past and the compromised future are beginning to look like a heroic quest: Can material this fluid and fiery exist next to the stodgy, note-by-note jazz recreations and equally unimaginative instrumental pop? Can it find a home in a marketplace more interested in pleasantries than provocation? Contemporary Jazz is one attempt to grapple with these questions, and if, by some chance, his ideals are not readily apparant in the music, Marsalis reinforces them with the cover: Its faded, paint-peeling image is of a woman with cigarette dangling from full red lips. The eyes are long gone but her spirit endures, an iconographic reminder of a time when music, even the most technically demanding kind, was driven by the pursuit of pleasure.

--- Tom Moon, JAZZIZ Magazine Copyright © 2000, Milor Entertainment, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Music with some class, August 26, 2000

By	Bandy (Singapore) - See all my reviews

Branford has been the most consistent player for nearly 20 years. His strength of tone, musical conviction and dynamic personality have made him one of the most highly acclaimed figures in modern jazz.In this album, you can hear Branford playing from the fiery hardbopping <Tain Mutiny> to the very elegiac ballad, <Requiem>, a heartfelt farewell to the world greatest pianist, Kenny Kirkland. Joey Calderazzo is the pianist, for this album. I always used to have doubts for Calderazzo to be a fulfilling musician with depth, like I have heard him playing with Micheal Brecker and George Garzone where he seems to be very stiff in his playing although all the notes he played are correct.He doesn't seems to have a kind of pacing or movement, many bland chops and playing like many people had mentioned before, a "talented Berkely student". Forget about that, in this album, hear the matured Joey Calderazzo with those fine touches on the piano, romance with beautiful harmonies and lyrical voices are played like never before (heard that in Requiem).The track Requiem showcase that Calderazzo's ability to be a player quite like Kenny Kirkland, a liquid player.Calderazzo has improved dramatically as a musician, you can hear the contrast in his own playing, in the Micheal Brecker's album <Two blocks from the edge>. After all, K.Kirkland is still the irreplaceable K.Kirkland... What I like about Tain is his ability to play high combustion drum patterns like Elvin Jones in the modern bop music and those majestic classical orchestral backings in Ballad music, truely remarkable. And Eric Revis is Branford's best bassist since Robert Hurst, his instinct for the right propulsive run of notes have given his band a stronger legs to stand on.This is a gifted quartet by God.

<Requiem> is the song that touches me greatly, when you hear that, you can feel joy, happiness and sadness. At the beginning of his solo, Branford evokes Coltrane's <Alabama>, a very solemn start of the solo.The music rise and fall of the chordal cycle lifts Branford from the gravity of the dirge.The music ends with a heartstopping pause inbetween, continues with the last variation of the written head return, and the last chord that that gave a lost finallity like: for the last day of someone's life to fulfill an important task. A mournful tribute to the great K.Kirkland.

It's really hard to describe in words how this album goes, but from the great ballads like <Requiem> and <Ayanna> and modern bops like <In the crease> <Elysium> <Tain Mutiny> or Tain's creative and playful <Countronious Rex> that shifted from dixieland swing to blues to gosel, ending with a hidden track <Steepy Hollow> played in the cool style of Ben Webster, sure the music speaks loud and clear.

If people out there wanna listen to music with depth and some class, please run to the store and get it, don't walk!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still Burnin', August 16, 2000

By A Customer

I think the best way to describe this CD as a listener very familiar with Mr. Marsalis' work is CHALLENGING, in a good way however. The CD's opener "In the Crease," is a compositionaly triumph. Marsalis combines odd meters with a mesmerizing melody.

Other songs, like "Requiem" for instance, made me feel quite pensive while "Tain's Mutiny" is a thrill a minute. Marsalis and drummer Watts have definitely developed some sort of telepathic ability after all those years of playing together and you can hear it time and again on this record.

I also really enjoyed the song "Contronious Rex"--very soulful. Overall, this album seems to pick up where Marsalis' phenomenal record "Requiem" from 1999 left off. The main difference is that pianist Joey Calderazzo is now filling the piano chair left vacant by the late Kenny Kirland but it certainly sounds like Calderazzo has really found his space in the quartet.

This album is a "must-have" for fans of Marsalis...

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars would be better without Joey Calderazzo., March 29, 2001

By	john lucey (Philadelphia PA) - See all my reviews

The playing of Branford and Jeff "Tain" Watts is outstanding on this disc. The compositions are really good. Unfortunately, Joey Calderazzo passed his "audition" with Branford somehow, and he is unfortunately part of his quartet now. Amazingly, this CD also won a grammy award this year, ahead of some albums that are much better, including Dave Holland's Prime Directive, a really great disc compared to this one.