On Aug. 14 the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City announced contemporary jazz exemplar Robert Glasper will host an exceptional residency in October, bringing together seven combinations of today's outstanding jazz talents for 48 shows on 24 nights.
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GRAMMY winners sitting in on the multiple configurations include Chris Dave and Derrick Hodge, who've played and won with Glasper's group the Robert Glasper Experiment, as well as Bilal, Christian McBride and Nicholas Payton. Exclusive details are at Billboard, and previous nominees in the lineups include Terrace Martin and Christian Scott. This ambitious residency not only shows Glasper's devotion to the genre, but reminds us jazz is very much alive!
"I came to New York tracking other people's footsteps, and now it's me and the musicians that I came up with who are making footprints for the next generation to follow," said Glasper. "New York is the reason everything popped off for me. It's the only place in the world with this heavy traffic of quintessential, true jazz and quintessential, true hip-hop, the only place I could have met these people and made this music … I'm taking over the Blue Note to tell that story, my music milestones, in the place it all began."
Just last year Glasper won his first Emmy Award, along with Common and Karriem Riggins, in Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics for "Letter To The Free" from the Netflix documentary 13th. His most recent GRAMMY win was for Best Compilation Soundtrack For Visual Media for the movie Miles Ahead at the 59th GRAMMY Awards. He has said he wants to win a GRAMMY in every genre. With soundtrack composing in his wide range as well, he seeks to join Common in Emmy-GRAMMY-Oscar territory someday.
Regardless of awards, jazz's rewards are legendary, spontaneous and rooted in U.S. cultural history, so these fresh fruits in October should be a welcome addition to anyone's musical diet.
