Rudy Royston

Jan 18 2020

Best of 2019 #69: Alexa Tarantino – “Winds of Change”

 

I don’t like doing the comparison thing.  It’s an easy target for snark, practically asking to be rebuked, and, when you get to the heart of it, it’s a lazy writing device.  BUT… not for nothing, when I listen to Winds of Change, it’s like the rush of springtime and hope and rejuvenation that I feel when listening to a classic hardbop recording like Duke Pearson’s Sweet Honey Bee.  There’s nothing quite like an album with melodies that loft upward as if given wings, harmonies that stir up gentle breezes that are somehow both warm and cool, and tempos that elicit a sense of what a walk through the park in low-gravity conditions might do for the soul.  Alexa Tarantino brings all this on her 2019 release.  There’s something delightfully old-school about this recording, and sometimes that’s everything.

Your album personnel:  Alexa Tarantino (alto & soprano saxophones, alto flute), Christian Sands (piano), Joe Martin (bass), Rudy Royston (drums), and Nick Finzer (trombone).

Released on Posi-Tone Records.

Music from New York City.

Listen | Read more | Available at:  Amazon

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Jan 4 2019

Best of 2018 #43: Rudy Royston – “Flatbed Buggy”

 

As the go-to drummer for an impressively diverse array of musicians, it’s always been a source of intrigue as to the influences Rudy Royston has absorbed along the way, and those he affected by way of his own perspective.  The answer provided by his excellent 2018 release Flatbed Buggy is “a little bit of both, actually.”  Before Bill Frisell’s recent trip down nostalgia lane, the guitarist was cementing his view of a modern Americana Jazz that incorporated healthy doses of chamber and folk.  Royston was right there for much of that ride, and the sharp differences between his expression of that music from those of Frisell’s, while situating itself as a bird-of-a-feather recording, show that the forces being exerted upon the music were not a one-way conduit of creativity.  The masterful balance of a light tunefulness and heady imagery makes for an intoxicating contrast in reactions, both emotional and cerebral… of complexity presented as simply as a well-crafted melody.

Released on Greenleaf Music.

I wrote about the album for The Bandcamp Daily.

Music from Denver, CO.

Available at:  Bandcamp | Amazon

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