Kendrick Scott: Corridors

Drummer Kendrick Scott's A Wall Becomes A Bridge (Blue Note, 2019) was everything to everybody and then some. Optimistic yet well aware of the roiling contradictions beneath it all, the formidable Corridors, its revivalist tenor intact, carries on that spirit of interplay and common alliance.

Breaking from the start with the loping, street-smart, stride of "What Day Is It?" Scott with Corridors take a sure journey, featuring conversant saxophonist Walter Smith III and the equally versed bassist Reuben Rogers' ride and gallop, each leading the way before handing the torch to the other. Its unique luster is half hip-hop and half tone poem.

Commissioned by Rio Sakairi, Art and Program Director for The Jazz Gallery's 2020 Artist Fellowship Series, Scott envisions Corridors a vessel for parallel emphasis, as the keynote track shows, with its rich mystery and tone set into motion by the Rogers' lone, dusky voice and Smith's insistent plea and the active shadings of "A Voice Through the Door."

Also on display is Scott's generous compositional style. He is so open is his muse that one might at first suspect Corridors a session led by any of the trio players. Case in point: "One Door Closes Another Opens," wherein each man's vulnerability and honesty is expressed but never judged or deemed lesser or more integral to the core value. With its shared kinetics, "Your Destiny Awaits" and the soul-driven "Threshold" push the three through inner and outer harmonic dimensions of design and random occurrence. Though it feels of a piece with the whole of Scott's conceptual template, Bobby Hutcherson's slippery "Is This My Sound Around Me?" highlights the play inherent as Scott, Smith, and Rogers nudge, jump, chide and slide. As a testament to our overall state of play, Corridors has no dark side. Only promise.