Steve Turre
May 2000

In the Spur
of the Moment
Telarc
2000

Spur of the Moment
Reviewed By
Don Williamson
Ed Kopp

Interview By
Don Williamson

Steve Turre was raised in California. He began playing the trombone as a child and was already engaged in professional work by the age of 13. Still in his teens, he performed with James Moody in Texas. In 1968, he was playing with the great reed player Rahsaan Roland Kirk when Kirk introduced him to the sound of blowing on a seashell. Turre began to collect and play on shells, in addition to the trombone, in clubs in the San Francisco Bay area.

Turre's first performances in Europe and New York were with Ray Charles' world tour in 1972. He moved to New York in 1973 when he joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. "I was thrilled and scared to death to be playing with Art," he recalls. "Back then, fusion and free jazz were in, and musicians asked me why I was playing be-bop. I told them, 'Because it's kicking my butt, and I want to learn how to play it.'"

Turre went on to work with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, Woody Shaw, Elvin Jones' Jazz Machine, Archie Shepp, Lester Bowie, Tito Puente, Cedar Walton, Slide Hampton, McCoy Tyner's Big Band, Dizzy Gillespie's United Nations Orchestra, Mercer Ellington and the Duke Ellington Orchestra, and the Mingus Big Band, Max Roach, and Horace Silver, among others, playing both trombone and shells in a wide range of styles, including Latin-American music.

With the Steve Turre Quartet, Quintet and Sextet, and with Explorations, his first shell choir, he has performed throughout the world. In 1993 Turre recorded an album entitled Sanctified Shells, on the Verve/Antilles label. Subsequently, he called his shell choir by the same name and has toured extensively throughout the United States and Europe. A final 1999 recording for Verve was entitled Lotus Flower and featured his Sextet with Strings, including Regina Carter, Akua Dixon, Mulgrew Miller, Buster Williams and Lewis Nash. It was with this group that Turre had the opportunity to perform at the Havana Jazz Festival in Cuba in December of 1998.

In June 2000, he moves to Telarc with a new release titled In the Spur of the Moment. Turre is joined by guest pianists (and composers) Ray Charles, Chucho Valdes and Stephen Scott. Each pianist plays on four tracks with a different all-star rhythm section.

Steve Turre's many awards include performance grants from the N.E.A., "Best Trombonist" at the First Annual New York Jazz Awards, "Outstanding Musician" Award at the Jazz Yatra in Bombay, India and first place in Readers' Polls for Down Beat, Jazziz and JazzTimes. In addition, he has hosted the show "Jazz Moods" for B.E.T. Television and appeared as a regular member of the Saturday Night Live Band for fifteen years.