Benny Golson Jazztet – New Time, New ‘Tet

Led by Grammy “Lifetime
Achievement” award winning saxophonist-composer Benny Golson, this
version of the jazztet features heavyweight jazz musicians on each
instrument: trumpet master, Eddie Henderson; trombone virtuoso, Steve
Davis; the brilliant Mike LeDonne, piano; bassist extraordinaire,
Buster Williams; and percussion ace, Carl Allen.

NEW TIME, NEW ‘TET
elaborates the traditional jazztet concept. This album’s song choices
advance a subtle but genuinely seductive proposal:  what if jazz,
conventionally defined, is overdue for re-inspection and revision? 
What if “jazz” and “classical” music are closer in spirit and artistic
execution than standard views of their difference comprehend?

NEW TIME, NEW ‘TET 
is an album with an implied “suite,” in which Golson joins new
compositions inspired by Giuseppi Verdi and Frederic Chopin to a
standard jazz repertoire. The artistic result is philosophical musing
that erupts into a street party.  At one moment, vocalist Al Jarreau
reprises Golson’s classic “Whisper Not,” while at another moment, we
encounter the uproarious (and comic) “Gypsy Jingle-Jangle.”

On
one side, Sonny Rollins’ mainstream “Airegin,” on the other side,
“Uptown Afterburn.” Highlights abound from beginning to end.  Golson’s
haunting and floating “From Dream To Dream” is a brilliant vehicle for
trombonist Steve Davis’ melodic elegance, while the insistent “Love Me
In A Special Way” invokes nobility rare in any art form or cultural
moment.  If you recall classic film noir themes that often play through
Golson’s capacious mind, then “Verdi’s Voice” awaits your attentive
engagement – a composition that resurrects a tradition of songwriting,
long gone, designated by the somewhat covert “Bronislau Kaper.”

Why
renew the Jazztet legacy?  For his part, Golson notes that, “the task
of re-conceiving a group with the strong identity and powerful
longevity of the original jazztet is no obvious matter.  The choice of
new players is crucial, of course. They must be up to the job of making
a new group sound every bit as identifiable and engaging as the earlier
band – but not in competition with it.  In short, the new Jazztet has
to have its own artistic identity while it also carries on the highly
acclaimed Jazztet tradition.  I think we’ve done that here.”

For
three years, between 1960 and the end of 1962, the original co-led
Benny Golson-Art Farmer Jazztet made seven albums that sold very well
and launched that sextet to a high plateau where gigs at all the best
jazz venues awaited.  Before that carefully mapped-out group dynamic
emerged, featuring new and long popular Golson compositions, Farmer
worked mostly on the West Coast with bandleaders Jay McShann, Johnny
Otis and Gerald Wilson.  On the East Coast he played with saxophonist
Gigi Gryce and joined pianist Horace Silver’s Quintet.  When Farmer and
Golson created their now-legendary Jazztet in 1959, jazz was quite
possibly at its peak of innovation.  In retrospect, it’s clear that
it’s six-man format and tightly integrated voicing launched one of that
era’s most compelling and artistically enduring ensembles. Its revival
now occurs right on time.
 
NEW TIME, NEW ‘TET
is a uniquely engaging suite of songs that give each member of this
juggernaut sextet room to blow. Nonetheless, the advance crafted by the
new group’s audacious ambition — to link the classical music tradition
to the post-bop jazz era — is achieved by the unit’s complex harmonic
layering and (for example) the sheer joy by which Thelonious Monk’s
“Epistrophy” romps effortlessly alongside Golson’s old-world chart,
“Verdi’s Voice.”

To cap the remarkable Benny Golson’s arrival at
the 80th anniversary of his birth, the master composer and musician
will be honored at the Kennedy Center in
Washington, DC, four days after the inauguration of our first
African-American president, Barack Obama (and the night before his
birthday).  A star-studded cast that includes Al Jarreau, the Clayton-Hamilton Big Band
and a gaggle of surprise guests will celebrate an artist whose life
continues to inscribe an unrelenting narrative of achievement as a
songwriter, band leader, film score creator, and peerless tenor
saxophonist; a great man whose story traverses teenage companionship in
Philadelphia with John Coltrane and Jimmy Heath, the onset of
professional maturity with Dizzy Gillespie’s big band, virtual
co-leadership with Art Blakey in an early version of the Jazz
Messengers and the fateful brilliance of founding the first Jazztet
with his close friend and partner, trumpeter Art Farmer. Benny Golson’s
career surges on, embracing both coasts of the United States and
everywhere in between; traveling across Europe on a constant basis with
forays to Japan and points north and south across the globe.

Not
unlike Duke Ellington before him, Benny Golson’s impact on the world
jazz community is extensive and deep.  He counts as friends and
companions some of the most respected and highest-achieving people on
the planet.  He is regularly welcomed to the inner sancta of the rich
and famous, but wherever Maestro Golson goes, his talent along with his
seductively cheerful demeanor; lend warmth and wisdom to his hosts. 
These journeys and the full scope of “the Golson saga” will be
published in the not too distant future: WHISPER NOT: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BENNY GOLSON.

To honor this milestone in this legend’s career, January 20th also finds the release of THE BEST OF BENNY GOLSON,
a career-spanning retrospective of classics from his towering body of
work including “Whisper Not,” “Along Came Betty,” “Are You Real?” and
“Killer Joe.”

Concord Jazz is proud to celebrate the life and
undivided success of a man who is a stunning example of both personal
and artistic integrity. Concord is pleased to support the “return” and
ongoing revival of a legendary jazz ensemble:  Benny Golson’s Jazztet –
here reborn and recharged, exploring new musical terrain for a newly
optimistic world.