Guitarist Lee Ritenour to Release New Project “A Twist of Rit”

GRAMMY-WINNING GUITARIST LEE RITENOUR SET TO RELEASE A TWIST OF RIT ON AUGUST 21, 2015

Featuring John Beasley, Dave Grusin, Patrice Rushen, Ernie Watts, Melvin Lee Davis, Michael Thompson, Wah Wah Watson, David T. Walker, Makoto Ozone, Tom Kennedy, Dave Weckl, Paulinho Da Costa, Ronald Bruner Jr., Chris Coleman, Bob Sheppard and Rashawn Ross

“The concept for A Twist of Rit combines new material and tunes selected from earlier albums. We twisted, flipped and reconstructed those songs with a twelve-piece band. Several of the songs are from my very first album, First Course, recorded in 1975 and the Rit album in 1980.”

GRAMMY-winning, guitarist Lee Ritenour, AKA Captain Fingers, has a wide-ranging array of material to revive, as evidenced by A Twist of Rit. 2015 commemorates 40 years since his debut recording, First Course, on Epic Records. A Twist of Rit, set for release on August 21, 2015 via Concord Records, is a magnificent follow-up to his critically acclaimed 2012 album Rhythm Sessions.

A Twist of Rit spotlights Ritenour with several long-time musical cohorts, including keyboardists John Beasley, Dave Grusin and Patrice Rushen; saxophonist Ernie Watts; bassists Melvin Lee Davis, Tom Kennedy and Dave Weckl; and percussionist Paulinho Da Costa. That core group is augmented by drummers Ronald Bruner Jr. and Chris Coleman, along with Bob Sheppard on saxophone and Rashawn Ross playing flugelhorn. Joining Ritenour for the first time are guitarists Michael Thompson, Wah Wah Watson and David T. Walker, plus Japanese pianist Makoto Ozone.

Photo Credit: Toshi Sakurai

A Twist of Rit features Ritenour’s soaring guitar lines with 12 of his compositions ranging from the funky fusion and sophisticated jazz that he has become so well known for. All of the material was captured by his longtime GRAMMY Award-winning engineer Don Murray and the tracks were recorded with everyone performing together, old-school, but with modern, state-of-the-art recording techniques. Another album highlight will be the debut of Hungarian guitarist Tony Pusztai, Grand Prize Winner of Ritenour’s biennial, 2014 Six String Theory Competition. Pusztai was selected from over 500 entries and 72 participating countries.

“People like Ernie, Patrice, Dave and John Beasley, who worked closely on [my album] Wes Bound – along with Melvin Davis and percussionist Paulinho Da Costa, go back with me to the very beginning,” Ritenour says. “Ernie had been on so many of my projects. And, of course, I couldn’t do this without Dave Grusin, who is my best buddy, and who has been involved in almost all of my recordings. All of these people are very close friends of mine. We’ve had this musical mafia for twenty, thirty, forty years.”

With his formidable fellow travelers, Ritenour revisits several selections from his iconic albums including First Course (1976), Friendship (1978) – an LP consisting of the Ritenour-led super-group that included Ernie Watts, Don Grusin, drummer Alex Acuna, percussionist Steve Forman, and bassist Abraham Laboriel – Rit, Vol.1 (1981), Earth Run (1986), Stolen Moments (1990) and This Is Love (1998).

Photo Credit: Toshi Sakurai

Save for “Pearl,” a heartfelt, Latin-tinged tribute to Ritenour’s mother, as well as the mid-tempo, bouncy title track and the surging, organ-filled “W.O.R.K.n’ It” (Weckl, Ozone, Ritenour, Kennedy) – another version, “More W.O.R.K,” will be released on an upcoming 5-LP retrospective box set – the rest of the album features the new-and-improved vintage Ritenour tracks.

From the LP First Course, “Wild Rice” and “Fatback” swing with some grooving, mid- and up-tempo Muscle Shoals-meets-Malibu horn lines, originally arranged by Tom Scott and re-arranged by Ritenour and Beasley that ring with the spirit of the late B.B. King and Steely Dan. Two more selections from First Course include the Crusaders-coded, Michael Omartian-arranged “A Little Bit of This and A Little Bit of That” and the funky, 9/4-time, Head Hunters-inspired “Sweet Syncopation.” The spry, festive “Bullet Train” from Friendship bounces with the air of a Brazilian love affair, and “Soaring,” from Earth Run, is rhythmically laced with a Latin lilt.

“Ooh Yeah,” from This Is Love, is reincarnated as a laid back, Quiet Storm selection, topped by Ritenour’s luscious, Wes Montgomery-esque chords. “Waltz for Carmen” from Stolen Moments, written for Ritenour’s wife, is an intricate duo featuring Tony Pusztai. “Tony, who is an insane classical guitarist from Hungary, has got some incredible jazz chops, too,” Ritenour proudly says. The zenith of the release is Ritenour’s re-imagination of “Countdown” from Rit, Vol 1., a surging, anthemic contemporary jazz classic of the highest order. “I did some sampling of my original recordings,” he says. “I was able to hunt down the original tracks and have them transferred to digital. We used a sample of the original “Countdown” vocoder [track]. As we were playing live, we were triggering the sample and playing along with it.”

A Twist of Rit aurally illustrates Ritenour’s delicate balance of maintaining his individuality while working with an array of diverse artists. “Even though I was a studio player, I was trying to establish my own identity,” he says. “The live thing is just as important as the studio thing. And when I did my first album, where a lot of the songs [on this album] are from, in 1975, I didn’t think I had a ‘Lee Ritenour sound.’ But then, a few years later, I listened to the record, and I realized that wow, I did have my own sound then.”

Along with A Twist of Rit, Concord Records will release a five LP vinyl box set of some of Ritenour’s classic records, including Wes Bound, Festival, Color Rit, Portrait and Earth Run. Ritenour will be touring and promoting these projects throughout 2015/16.

Concord Records