Saxophonist Kenny Garrett to Release New Album “Do Your Dance!” on July 8th, 2016 | LISTEN!

Saxophonist Kenny Garrett Celebrates Global
Perspectives of Individuality on Do Your Dance!

Available July 8 via Mack Avenue Records

More than any other artist in traditional jazz today, saxophonist/composer/arranger Kenny Garrett and his band are known to entice audiences to want to get up and groove. Be it in Spain where a man from Cameroon leaped up and broke out some African moves then was joined by a young break-dancer, or in Germany where a clearly classically trained ballet dancer was brought to his feet; in Poland where a fan literally jumped from the balcony onto the stage to dance, or at a festival in Barbados where music lovers got on up and grooved in the rain to “Happy People,” the spectacle is always the same: the spirit takes over and the movements come naturally. It is this spirit that Garrett has instigated and witnessed from stages around the world that fills Do Your Dance!–the saxophonist’s fourth for Mack Avenue Records.

“I look out and see people waiting for the songs that they can party to and express themselves,” confirms Garrett, the nine-time winner of DownBeat’s Reader’s Poll for Alto Saxophonist of the Year. “Do Your Dance! was inspired by audiences moved to rise from their seats and ‘lift a foot!’ Some are reluctant to participate because they think that others are better than they are. I tell them, ‘Do your dance.’ That means even if you have to ‘stay pocket,’ do the Funky Four Corners or the Nae-Nae, don’t worry about what the other person is doing. Let it all hang out and ‘do your dance!’ On the title track we combine the spirit of a `70s-style beach get down with just a touch of hip-hop-ever in search of the link between the two. I had it playing while I was talking to my daughter on FaceTime. When it got to the end with that new vibe, she smiled and I thought, ‘Uh huh–gotcha!'”

Do Your Dance! is a travelogue of rhythm from the melodic lilt of “Calypso Chant” and the soothing, Brazil-inspired “Bossa” to the summer barbecue spirit of “Backyard Groove” and “Philly.” Garrett elaborates, “‘Philly’ was inspired by people at an outdoor festival we played down the street from Temple University. That older generation was going in–dancing to hard bop, funkafied fire and calypso…anything we threw at them! That’s how people used to dance to jazz.”

Photo Credit: Jimmy Katz

Aside from Bruner–who, since gigging with Garrett, has played with artists from Stevie Wonder to Kamasi Washington–the saxophonist is joined by another drummer, McClenty Hunter, who was first documented with Garrett on his last album, Pushing the World Away. Also returning from the previous album is bassist Corcoran Holt whom Garrett first encountered four years ago at Blues Alley in DC.

Percussionist Rudy Bird goes back with Garrett to a 1983 tour of Sophisticated Ladies, and has since played with Michael Jackson and Lauryn Hill. Then there’s notoriously obtuse pianist Vernell Brown, Jr. who has played with the saxophonist since 2002’s Happy People and its follow-up Standard of Language. Finally, there is Garrett’s longtime co-producer Donald Brown, an old friend from days when, as a pianist, he shared the bandstand in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and his right-hand man on sessions off and on since Garrett’s highest Billboard Jazz chart-topper to date, African Exchange Student, in 1990.

Detroit-born Kenny Garrett is a five-time GRAMMY® Award-nominee and 2010 GRAMMY® Award-winner (as a member of Chick Corea’s and John McLaughlin’s co-led Five Peace Band), and the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from Berklee College of Music in 2011. His distinguished credits extend from starting with the Duke Ellington Orchestra (under son Mercer Ellington) to Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw, Donald Byrd and Miles Davis (with whom he ascended to international stardom); to contemporary stars Marcus Miller, Sting, Meshell Ndegeocello, Q-Tip and funkateers Cameo.

“It’s been a whirlwind,” Garrett concludes. “Records and concerts are about me taking people on the ride I want to take them on. It can be pretty ballads, some intensity, and then we can party! When they leave, I hope they feel like we took them on a journey. And when they come back to see us or put that CD in the player years later, I hope people have a deeper perspective on the music than the first time.”

Kenny Garrett · Do Your Dance!
Mack Avenue Records · Release Date: July 8, 2016

For more information on Kenny Garrett, please visit: KennyGarrett.com

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