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| Wallace Roney Newsletter + Joe's Pub Appearance, September 30th Wallace Roney Newsletter appearing Friday, September 30th at Joe's Pub NYC .Wallace Roney Newsletter are: Wallace Roney Antoine Roney Eric Allen, drums Ugonna Okegwo, bass Robert Glasper, piano DJ Val, turntablist . With Mystikal, Roney continues to explore the deep, expansive chemistry he established with his crew on Prototype. Returning to the tightly-knit unit are his wife Geri Allen on acoustic and electric piano and synthesizers and his younger brother Antoine Roney on tenor and soprano saxophones and bass clarinet. Augmenting that potent triumverate of soloists are Matt Garrison on acoustic and electric bass, Adam Holzman on synthesizers and Eric Allen on drums. Val Jeanty on No Room For Argument and replaces DJ Logic on turntables this time out) provides spoken word interludes and other little ‘ear cookies’ along the way while former Weather Reporter Bobby Thomas Jr. also contributes percussive colors on a couple of tunes. Wallace Roney, while one of the most accomplished and acclaimed trumpeters in jazz today, remains one of the music's most misunderstood masters. Roney rose to national prominence in the 1980's as a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, earning favorable notice as a young lion with a roaring sound and impressive technique in the Clifford Brown-Lee Morgan-Freddie Hubbard tradition. By the middle of the decade Roney was holding down a difficult dual membership with both the Messengers and Tony Williams' Quintet. Soon he began to display a more thoughtful and spacious approach to sound and improvisation -- one that nodded in the direction of Williams’ former leader, Miles Davis, who by that time had befriended the young trumpeter, having given him the blue horn that is his trademark. In 1991, at Davis' request, Roney played side-by-side with his mentor at the Montreux Jazz Festival, performing Gil Evans' classic arrangements from Miles Ahead and Porgy and Bess with the Quincy Jones-George Gruntz Orchestras. Wallace's immersion into the Davis canon and ten years of study with Miles had an understandably profound effect on his approach to music – one that perfectly suited his own forward-looking artistic vision. On his Warner Brothers debut cd Misteriosos, the eerie resemblance of the sound of Roney’s trumpet to that of Davis caused much of the jazz press, who were superficially focused on the trumpeter’s tone while overlooking his very personal choice of notes, to misguidedly label him a Davis clone. While the controversy over Roney's decision to follow a personal musical path inspired by Davis (among others), loomed large in the press, other interesting aspects of his career were largely ignored. Few people knew it was Roney’s trumpet playing behind P-Diddy's Broadway performance of A Raisin in the Sun. His role as the model for Denzel Washington’s performance in Spike Lee's Mo' Better Blues was virtually unacknowledged, as was his part in inspiring Quentin Tarrentino to create the Pulp Fiction character Marsalis Wallis as a composite parody of Roney and fellow Jazz Messenger alumnus, Wynton Marsalis. Roney's own life story is every bit as interesting as the cinematic characters modeled after him. Born in Philadelphia, May 25, 1960, the young trumpeter's special musical gift was first recognized at the age of six by Sigmund Hering, the first trumpet chair of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra with whom Wallace would later study. When police brutality and gang violence threatened his Philly neighborhood, Roney was sent him to live in Washington, DC, where he attended the prestigious Duke Ellington School for the Arts, while playing professionally with his own group. He went on to study further at Howard University, where he met his future wife, pianist Geri Allen, and Berklee College in Boston, a prime incubator of the burgeoning neobop movement, before moving to New York, where he paid heavy dues before eventually joining Blakey and then Williams. Wallace would go on to share bandstands and recording studios with many of the giants of jazz, including Kenny Barron, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Randy Weston and Chick Corea, in addition to Miles, but since the beginning of nineties it has been as the leader of his own bands that the trumpeter made his most consistently rewarding music. His excellent early efforts on Muse introduced the world to Roney's skill as composer and bandleader, while introducing such important young talents as Christian McBride and Jack Terrason. After recording three fine records for Warner and another Concord Jazz to finish out the Twentieth Century, Roney has reestablished himself in the new millennium recording for High Note Records. Last year's Prototype shined the spotlight on Wallace's tightly knit working group featuring his brother Antoine Roney on saxophones, his wife Geri Allen and Miles Davis alumnus Adam Holtzman on keyboards, Matthew Garrison (son of the late Jimmy Garrison) on electric and acoustic basses, Eric Allen (no relation to Geri) on drums and DJ Val on turntables. The music, while in the tradition of Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi band and the electro-acoustic units of Miles Davis, clearly demonstrated Roney's own vision in creating music that had both artistic integrity and the potential for popular appeal. On his latest release, Mystikal, the trumpeter continues in the tradition of Prototype, following his own muse with the same unit. Describing his fellow band members, the leader proudly proclaims, “Frankly, I don't think there is anyone better than these people I've got in this band. They all share that idea of trying to take the music further.” Taking music further is what Wallace Roney is all about. Just listen to his music and its immediately evident that his is the sound of the future of jazz. write your comments about the article :: © 2005 Jazz News :: home page |