Jazz Articles about Kenny Garrett

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Kenny Garrett: Beyond the Wall

by John Barron
February 28, 2007

Native Detroiter Kenny Garrett has been on the cutting edge of jazz for some time now. The former Miles Davis sideman has built a reputation as an uncompromising trailblazer while managing to write melodic and highly accessible music. Of his many sessions, Beyond the Wall could very well be his best.

Inspired by his long-time fascination with the culture, music and spirituality of China, Garrett has captured a unique musical vision that stimulates thoughts of the Far East while simultaneously ...

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Kenny Garrett: Beyond The Wall

by Russ Musto
November 3, 2006

Since the release of John Coltrane's A Love Supreme (Impulse!, 1965), only a handful of albums have effectively explored jazz's spiritual aspects while sustaining its exciting secular qualities. Beyond The Wall is a masterful work of original music that succeeds marvelously on both levels, building upon Trane's legacy, as well as the work of the date's two very special guest artists--Pharoah Sanders and Bobby Hutcherson--bolstered by the superb rhythm section of pianist Mulgrew Miller, bassist Robert Hurst, III and drummer ...

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Nels Cline: New Monastery: A View Into The Music of Andrew Hill

by Nic Jones
September 30, 2006

The eight-word subtitle just about sums it up. Cline and his fellows don't take the often too reverential repertory approach with Hill's music, and instead offer up a programme that's as stimulating for its approach as it is for the ground it covers, and that ground is considerable, taking in as it does compositions recorded by Hill over nearly forty years. To hear what is effectively an overview of his music in this way is to be granted an insight ...

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Kenny Garrett: Musical Explorer

by Jason Crane
September 11, 2006

Alto saxophonist and composer Kenny Garrett has released more than a dozen albums over a career spanning nearly three decades. His resume would make the average jazz fan weak in the knees: Freddy Hubbard, Woody Shaw, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, the Duke Ellington Band, the Mel Lewis Orchestra, and many others.Garrett was born in Detroit in 1960. His musical travels have taken him around the world, and awakened in him a desire to learn more than just what ...

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Kenny Garrett: Beyond the Wall

by John Kelman
August 25, 2006

Sometimes homages can be too reverential. Alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett, with a spiritual energy mirroring a significant influence, John Coltrane, intended to use Beyond the Wall as an opportunity to record with pianist McCoy Tyner, with whom he's shared the bandstand on occasion. Though a scheduling conflict prevented Tyner from participating, his spirit--and that of his late employer--looms large over the project. The result echoes the scope of larger-scale Tyner projects like Asante (Blue Note, 1970) and the fierce modality ...

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Kenny Garrett: Beyond the Wall

by Troy Collins
August 22, 2006

Alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett's first recording for Nonesuch, a concept album inspired by a recent trip to China, finds him in the company of an all-star ensemble. A phenomenally gifted soloist with a singular tone and instantly identifiable phrasing, he has walked a fine line between mainstream jazz and more popular forms in the recent past. In previous situations with producer Marcus Miller, Garrett veered dangerously close to watered down smooth jazz. Beyond The Wall remedies this situation. ...

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Kenny Garrett

by Peter Madsen
May 30, 2006

Greetings to all of you Wide-Open Jazz and Beyond readers. I've just returned from a one month European tour with the great funk trombonist Fred Wesley of James Brown fame (who I'll write about in a future article). We played many of the summer festivals including the world-famous Montreaux Jazz Festival. As I was roaming the halls in the backstage area I ran into an old friend of mine that I hadn't seen in a while, the incredible saxophonist Kenny ...