Jazz Articles about Kenny Garrett

About Kenny Garrett

Live Review

Kenny Garrett at Ronnie Scott’s: The Ancestors in the Room

by Kofi Adjepong-Boateng
July 24, 2026

Kenny Garrett Ronnie Scott's London July 17, 2026 There are jazz clubs and there is the basement on Frith Street. Kenny Garrett, whom Miles Davis heard and hired nearly forty years ago, is back, and at the first notes of 'Haynes Here' the room understood this would be not a night of repertory, but where the repertory comes from. The band is worth naming slowly, a lesson in transmission before a note sounds. ...

Interview

Kenny Garrett Speaks Through The Soul of His Jazz

by Dean Nardi
February 10, 2025

Mental bungee-jumping may not be their sport of choice, but a cerebral ledge exists that sooner or later every jazz musician must leap off. One day, ready or not, tuning up or shaking down their instrument, they will glance in a mirror, hug a pregnant mother-to-be, second-line a funeral, walk in the deepest, dark woods, chance a liaison, wake in the night with a heart beating like Brian Blade hitting a snare, receive a message from another dimension, get lost ...

Festivals Talking

Moers Festival Interviews: Kenny Garrett

by Martin Longley
March 4, 2023

The release of Kenny Garrett's Sounds From The Ancestors album (Mack Avenue, 2021) has reinvigorated his live performances, as the saxophonist tours heartily with an expanded band that's heavy on the Afro-Latin percussion. In recent times, multi-instrumentalist Garrett has been gigging with this dedicated Sounds From The Ancestors line-up, heavily devoted to the album, but not averse to making key tune selections from past decades. Garrett likes to pair up the instruments, with Melvis Santa and Rudy Bird playing percussion ...

Album Review

Chick Corea: The Montreux Years

Read "The Montreux Years" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
September 26, 2022

If there is anything more ambitious than curating an extensive, comprehensive collection covering the history of an artist, it is collating selected works which vividly outline a particular timeline or theme. Chick Corea's The Montreux Years is a fine example of the latter; this seventh edition in the archive series devoted to the iconic festival not only reflects the late composer and pianist's technical skills, but also his eclectic stylistic tastes. And that is not to mention his fondness for ...

Album Review

Kenny Garrett: Sounds From The Ancestors

Read "Sounds From The Ancestors" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
December 24, 2021

On Sounds from the Ancestors, Kenny Garrett's fifth album for Mack Avenue and his first since Do You Dance! (Mack Avenue 2016), the former saxophonist for both Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and Miles Davis, turns to the past for inspiration. From the Motown and gospel music he was weaned on as a youth growing up in Detroit, to the the hard bop of Blakey and post-bop of John Coltrane , Garrett wears his influences proudly on his sleeve on this ...

Interview

Kenny Garrett: The Value of Ancestors

by R.J. DeLuke
December 6, 2021

Saxophonist Kenny Garrett has always respected the music of his predecessors. He knows its importance. He knows the value of the tradition, knowledge and innovation passed on to new generations of musicians. He's recorded, for example, dedications to John Coltrane (Pursuance, Warner Bros., 1996), as well as Joe Henderson and Sonny Rollins (Trilogy, Warner Bros., 1992)). Heck, Garrett, undoubtedly one of the finest alto saxophonists (any style saxophone, for that matter) of his generation, has played with many ...

Album Review

Miles Davis: Merci Miles! Live at Vienne

Read "Merci Miles! Live at Vienne" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
October 28, 2021

So great was Miles Davis' legend, so magnetic his aura, that the crowds and the adulation only increased towards the end of his life—a period when he was playing arguably the least progressive music of his career. This double-CD recording of a concert at the Jazz à Vienne Festival from 1991 is a case in point. Ten thousand people packed into the Roman amphitheatre that July evening, while another two-and-a-half thousand who had turned up without tickets were shepherded onto ...