This review appears in the April 2012 issue of The New York City Jazz Record.
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Kenny Garrett
Seeds from the Underground
(Mack Avenue)
By David R. Adler
Alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett took an electric turn on his 2008 Mack Avenue debut Sketches of MD, a live album that harked back to his ’80s apprenticeship with Miles Davis. He ventured further into “fusion” through 2009, touring with Chick Corea and John McLaughlin in the Five Peace Band. With Seeds from the Underground, his second Mack Avenue disc, Garrett returns the acoustic idiom of earlier outings such as Beyond the Wall (2006), Standard of Language (2003) and his revered ’90s titles Triology and Pursuance.
Pianist Benito Gonzalez from Sketches of MD stays on board, leaving the Rhodes and synthesizer behind and contributing some of the finest solos of the date. Nedelka Prescod (a.k.a. Echols), the vocalist from Beyond the Wall, returns to sing on three tracks (though her persistent doubling of the vamp melody on “Haynes Here” grows excessive). On bass is Nat Reeves, whose first appearance with the leader dates back to Introducing Kenny Garrett in 1984. On drums, from Garrett’s hometown of Detroit, is the young Ronald Bruner, a powerhouse who seizes the spotlight on the title track. Percussionist Rudy Bird gives the rhythm section a fuller, more involved sound, starting with the bright Latin-tinged opener “Boogety Boogety.”
Garrett is one of the few mainstream players who can bring the alto sax into ecstatic “Chasin’ the Trane” territory, and his recent collaborations with Pharoah Sanders have heightened this impulse all the more. It’s readily apparent on “J. Mac,” a burner with echoes of “Afro-Blue,” and “Du-Wo-Mo,” a midtempo tribute to Ellington, Monk and Woody Shaw. (Most tracks on Seeds are dedications.) “Laviso, i Bon?”, though inspired by the Gwo-ka tradition of Guadeloupe, is a modal 6/8 blues that closes the date with Gonzalez in brilliant form.
These compositions, firmly rooted in the harmonic language and tempestuous rhythm of the Coltrane-Tyner mid-’60s, have their value as blowing vehicles. But Garrett sustains greater interest with the limping asymmetric meter of “Wiggins,” or the slow and mournful minor blues of “Detroit,” which relies on sumptuous vocal harmonies and a hypnotic background of crackling vinyl, with no drums, and no solos.
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