Instrumentalist Warren Wolf To Release Self-Titled Album on Aug. 16th, 2011
RELEASE SELF-TITLED DEBUT ALBUM ON
MACK AVENUE RECORDS – AUGUST 16
RISING STAR IS JOINED BY STELLAR LINEUP,
INCLUDING MENTOR CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE
It’s no exaggeration to state that the release of Warren Wolf, the eponymous debut album for Mack Avenue Records by Warren Wolf,
will make it as apparent to jazz fans as it already is to jazz insiders
that the 31-year-old vibraphonist is the next major voice on his
instrument. Joined by a unit of authoritative swingers (bassist Christian McBride, pianist Peter Martin, drummer Greg Hutchinson, alto and soprano saxophonist Tim Green, and, on two tracks, trumpeter Jeremy Pelt),
Wolf offers a ten-piece program that admirably represents his singular
blend of efflorescent chops, muscular attack, lyric sensibility,
harmonic acumen, encyclopedic knowledge of hardcore jazz vocabulary,
tireless groove and downright musicality.
“I’m
trying to bring forth what most cats did back in the day, coming out
right at you swinging, nice and hard, not a lot of hard melodies or
weird time signatures,” Wolf says. “I like to play really hard, fast and
kind of flashy. I like to take it to a whole other level.”
“What
he does on vibes is pretty incredible,” says McBride, Wolf’s employer
since 2007 in the Inside Straight band and co-producer of this album
along with Mack Avenue EVP of A&R, Al Pryor. He used to
introduce Wolf as “the Cyborg,” in affectionate tribute to his
head-shaking-but never robotic-feats of instrumental derring-do. “You
can’t hear Warren and not be highly impressed,” he says. “Give him some
music to learn, he pretty much has it committed to memory in a matter of
minutes. In a couple of days, he has it on the piano. Then suddenly,
he’s internalizing every part of the music-the melody, the chord
changes, the song’s overall personality.” You’re listening to him,
thinking, ‘Yeah, that’s what I had in mind.'”
McBride
first encountered Wolf in 2000 at Jazz Aspen, during the bass great’s
first year as Artistic Director. “I wanted to play with Christian,” Wolf
states. “So I decided to buy all his records and be ready to play
whatever tune he called.” At the moment of truth, he played “Shade of
the Cedar Tree” without sheet music. McBride picks up the narrative: “I
was flattered, I was impressed, and I was shocked to hear somebody play
the vibes with so much melodic content. Warren was in the back of my
brain after that. I promised him, ‘One of these days, I will get a band
and hire you. I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but you will be
there.'”
At
the time, Wolf was attending Berklee College of Music, from which he
graduated in 2001. Born and raised in Baltimore, where he currently
resides, he’s less widely known to “civilians” than his bona fides
would merit. Still, he’s anything but a newcomer on the scene. In
addition to two self-released recordings and two dates for the Japanese
market on which he tears through producer-selected repertoire with
panache and an informed point of view, his CV includes gigs with such
eminent veterans as McBride, Bobby Watson, Mulgrew Miller and Tim
Warfield, and recent encounters with the Jazz at Lincoln Center
Orchestra, the George Coleman-Joey DeFrancesco Quartet and a Music of
the Modern Jazz Quartet project led by pianist Aaron Diehl, the 2011
American Pianists Association Cole Porter Fellowship winner. He also
leads a strong working unit with Green, pianist Lawrence Fields, bassist
Kris Funn and drummer John Lamkin.
For
Wolf to interpret the MJQ’s music is eminently apropos, as he considers
Milt Jackson a primary influence. “When I heard him, I realized that’s
how I want the vibes to sound,” Wolf recalls. “But I always wanted to
style myself to play like a horn player. Charlie Parker’s recordings
with Miles were my biggest influence. Later I listened to Herbie
Hancock, Chick Corea and people like that.”
The
namesake son of a school-teacher who is an amateur percussionist and
the grandson of James Wolf, a gigging jazz pianist around Baltimore
since the ’50s, Wolf has, as he puts it, “been going hard at music since
the age of three.” “I had a very strict musical upbringing,” he told Downbeat
magazine last fall. “Until I left high school, I practiced five days a
week, kind of like a regular job-30 minutes on drums, 30 minutes on the
mallets (vibraphone/marimba) and then 30 minutes on piano. Over that
course of time, not to sound conceited, I got very good on all three
instruments. Vibes was the instrument I happened to get best at.
“427
Mass Ave.,” the set opener, is “a simple I-IV-V blues” named for the
street address of Wally’s, a venerable Cambridge bar where several
generations of Boston students have performed. There, Wolf told Downbeat,
“I figured out ways to get the endurance and power to get a decent
sound out of the vibes. I started weightlifting so I could get more
force. Now I try to calm down, but sometimes you can’t help it because
of the spirit and emotion of the music.” That’s an accurate description
of the leader’s volcanic declamation, propelled by Hutchinson’s funky 21st century beats, following vigorous testimony from Green and Pelt, and preceding a pungent statement by McBride.
The
ambiance turns romantic on Wolf’s laid-back, bossa-esque “Natural
Beauties,” a paean to women who don’t artificially enhance their beauty.
Martin, Wolf and Green (soprano saxophone) reinforce the sentiment with
romance-tinged solos.
“I
could imagine Bobby Watson playing a few lines of it,” Wolf says of
“Sweet Bread,” a surging sextet track that blends soul and harmonic
sophistication in a manner reminiscent of the master altoist, who
included it in his book when he took Wolf on the road.
On
the ballad “How I Feel At This Given Moment,” Wolf states the melody on
vibraphone then shifts to marimba for his solo. “I wanted to add the
marimba’s delicate wooden sound,” Wolf says. “Sometimes I compare it to
the acoustic bass; depending upon the mallets you use, you can control
the sound in many different ways.”
Penned
by Wolf’s close playing partner and fellow Baltimorean, Tim Green,
“Eva” offers “nonstop movement, lots of chords from measure to measure.”
“I can be a complex musician, too; everything doesn’t have to be bluesy
and straightforward,” says Wolf, who proves the point on a vertiginous,
swinging solo.
In addressing Chick Corea’s iconic “Señor Mouse,” originally a duo vehicle for Corea and Gary Burton on the album Crystal Silence,
Wolf eschews the piano, instead overdubbing the vibraphone
improvisation over a marimba part executed with admirable technique and
feeling. He displays similar sensitivity on Johnny Mandel’s “Emily,”
most commonly associated with Bill Evans, and addressed here as a waltz.
“I wanted something you could possibly dance to,” Wolf says. “Also it’s
a peaceful, sing-able melody, and fits the vibes very well.”
“Katrina”
is a minor blues composed in response to those who suffered in the wake
of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. After an opening etude, on which McBride
bows the bass line, Hutchinson sound-paints on cymbals and small
percussion, Green plays the melody, and Wolf and Martin lay out the
harmonic structure, there ensues a slow New Orleans style blues that
evokes the sound of Wynton Marsalis circa Soul Gestures in Southern Blue.
Greg
Hutchinson propels “One For Lenny” at a supersonic tempo that might
satisfy Boston drummer Lenny Nelson, who, Wolf recalls, “would come to
Wally’s and tell us ‘Let’s take it uptown,’ meaning as fast as
possible.” Wolf, Green, Martin and McBride fulfill that imperative
admirably.
The
proceedings conclude with Peter Martin’s “Intimate Dance,” a pretty
ballad in three, highlighted by Wolf’s yearning rubato solo. “After all
the energy that came forth,” Wolf says, “I wanted to wind things down,
end the session with something slow.”
“I
don’t think there’s anything Warren can’t handle,” McBride says. “My
dream for him is that he eventually gets to collaborate with the
super-duper heavyweights. I can’t wait to see where he’ll go next.”
Warren Wolf · Warren Wolf
Mack Avenue Records · Release Date: August 16, 2011