Bruce Hornsby Calls Jazz "Meeting" with Christian McBride and Jack DeJohnette

NEW YORK - Bruce Hornsby refuses to be counted among the pop stars trying on jazz for size.

“I can see why someone may want to make an album that goes down easy and why a record company would want to put it out because it's a quick way to make a sale," said Hornsby, who makes his all-instrumental jazz debut with Camp Meeting, due August 7 via Legacy.

“But my record is just the opposite. I have two of the most in-demand jazz artists, Christian McBride on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums, playing with me, and we go into plenty of dissonant, stark, angular sonic places," he said. “This is not casual jazz playing; it's been something I've been wanting to do for years."

The genesis of Camp Meeting stretches back to Hornsby's jazz studies at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and the University of Miami. But after graduation he gravitated to the songwriter camp as a pianist/vocalist, even though his earliest pop hits, among them “The Way It Is" and “The Valley Road," featured jazz-informed piano breaks. He has also worked through the years with such top-tier jazz artists as Pat Metheny, Branford Marsalis and Wayne Shorter.

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AAJ Review of Camp Meeting by Mark F. Turner