Joshua Redman\u2019s latest project is a celebration of the power of three\u2014the music of three iconic jazz composers interpreted in the classic trio format of saxophone, bass, and drums. The music is drawn from the works of Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and Wayne Shorter, each of whom Redman considers \u201cnot just relevant but foundational\u201d for today\u2019s musicians, and the setting returns to a format in which he\u00a0has excelled throughout his career.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The 3×3 concept emerged, in part, from Redman\u2019s COVID-19 pandemic experience. Literally out the door on his way to the airport for a three-week tour of Europe when the world shut down in March 2020, the saxophonist found himself in the unprecedented situation of not being able to make music with another human being \u201cin a real space, in real time\u201d for more than six months. \u201cWhen I finally started getting together occasionally with folks for outdoor jam sessions,\u201d he recalls, \u201cthe approach was predictably casual: \u2018Let\u2019s just play some tunes.\u2019 Naturally, a lot of the tunes that were called were ones written by Duke, Monk, or Wayne.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n While acknowledging the immeasurable importance of prolific composers like Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Benny Golson, and Horace Silver, Redman posits that \u201cone might be hard-pressed to find three others whose oeuvre is referenced as much and is as relevant to the contemporary acoustic jazz conversation as that of Ellington, Monk, and Shorter. \u201dHe views the canonical contributions of these musical masters as key weigh stations in his own artistic development. Redman discovered Ellington at a relatively early stage. \u201cWhen you\u2019re first learning to play this music, you inevitably encounter Ellington. His songs are so eminently sophisticated but still refreshingly approachable for a beginning improviser, and you can\u2019t get past the fact that he was one of the first to masterfully and convincingly synthesize blues idioms with the lyricism of popular song. \u201dMonk\u2019s music began to forcefully capture Redman\u2019s attention a bit later, as he became fascinated by the pianist-composer\u2019s \u201cinfectious and relentless rhythmic and motivic focus\u201d and the way his songs could \u201csomehow be edgy and oblique yet at the same time so compelling and direct.\u201d And as his interest in jazz deepened even further, Redman gradually embraced and then immersed himself in what he describes as \u201cthe floating, magical, mysterious quality” of Shorter\u2019s sound. \u201cWayne Shorter is sort of like the poet laureate of jazz,\u201d he suggests. \u201cHis music can be so evocative, almost dreamlike, yet still crystal clear, firmly rooted, and effortlessly swinging. And, like Duke and Monk, Wayne is a great Black composer, whose work forms the bedrock of our modern-day cannon, and which just so happens to translate surprisingly well in a trio context.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n 3×3 takes Redman into what, for him, is a rather atypical focus on repertory. \u201cI\u2019m generally a concept-averse dude,\u201d he admits, \u201cand outside of my years with the SFJAZZ Collective, and to a lesser degree the Still Dreaming band, this may in a way be the most \u2018conceptual\u2019 thing I\u2019ve ever done. In the past, I\u2019d never really wanted to pursue a project focusing on any particular composer or period or \u2018theme.\u2019 At the same time, I always wanted to do more than just \u2018play tunes.\u2019 If I was playing other composers\u2019 music, I\u2019d often feel a bit of a nagging obligation to try in some way to re-fashion or re-arrange their songs\u2014like perhaps that was somehow required in order for me to put my stamp on them, to earn the right to play them. This time: maybe not so much. The beauty and genius of Duke, Monk, and Wayne is that their compositions beg no reinvention. They are so cogent and complete and yet so broadly malleable and interpretable just as they are. Of course, I\u2019m not promising I won\u2019t throw in a few of my own originals or original arrangements from time to time. It\u2019s jazz. It\u2019s improvisation. We go with the flow!\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Redman sees the sax\/bass\/drums format as presenting an adequate challenge for varying moods and approaches. \u201cThere\u2019s always the danger that everything can start to kind of sound the same\u2014a sort of chattering, homogeneous abstraction. The more you strip things away, the more responsibility each musician carries in terms of shaping and coloring the overall experience,\u201d he emphasizes. \u201cYou have to do more, which absolutely does not mean that you have to play more\u2014actually it\u2019s often precisely the opposite. But each musician has to maintain a sense of composition and texture and narrative; simultaneous attention to minute detail and awareness of the big picture; a beautiful, full, and flexible sound; and, of course, melodic invention, harmonic acuity, and deep communal groove.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n On these terms, the pandemic has perhaps left Redman especially well prepared. \u201cSome folks seemed to be under the impression that the lockdown was like some sort of composer\u2019s dream, presenting so much free time to write and create. And for a spell there, I started to feel guilty that I was not really doing any of that\u2014that I wasn\u2019t writing my symphony, or at least my string quartet,\u201d he confesses with a chuckle. \u201cBut then I realized, and accepted, that without the feedback loop of playing and communicating with other musicians and audiences in real time, my sense of creativity and inspiration inevitably lags. Music for me is fundamentally social. It\u2019s collaborative. It\u2019s conversational. I can\u2019t truly create in a vacuum. But I can still get to work. One thing I have been able to do has been to practice with a level of consistency and commitment I\u2019ve never really shown before. I\u2019ve been able to hunker down, to dig deep, to at least start to address some of the huge gaping holes in my playing and musicianship and craft. Now I\u2019m looking forward to putting all that shelter-in-place shedding to good creative use\u2014hopefully!\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So 3×3 finds Redman applying himself to some of jazz\u2019s greatest works in one of jazz\u2019s greatest formats. \u201cThese compositions offer as much inspiration as any three improvising musicians could ever ask for,\u201d he summarizes. \u201cI look forward to discovering them anew on the bandstand and following them wherever the moment leads.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Joshua Redman\u2019s latest project is a celebration of the power of three\u2014the music of three iconic jazz composers (Ellington, Monk, and Shorter) interpreted in the classic trio format of saxophone, bass, and drums.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":13997,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"tags":[253],"tribe_events_cat":[27],"acf":[],"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"Scottsdale Center For The Performing Arts","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/scottsdaleperformingarts.org","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsdaleperformingarts.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/13995"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsdaleperformingarts.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsdaleperformingarts.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/tribe_events"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsdaleperformingarts.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsdaleperformingarts.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scottsdaleperformingarts.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/13995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsdaleperformingarts.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsdaleperformingarts.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsdaleperformingarts.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13995"},{"taxonomy":"tribe_events_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsdaleperformingarts.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events_cat?post=13995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}