I’d been meaning to go hear Blanchard’s band with Aaron Parks, Lionel Loueke, Brice Winston, Derrick Hodge and Kendrick Scott. Last night at Joe’s Pub I finally did, and I was floored. I knew that Blanchard’s last two Blue Notes, Bounce and Flow, were strong, but live the material was absolutely enormous — full of drama, sonic exploration, harmonic depth, improvisational fire. Everyone on the bandstand was a monster. Blanchard knew it, and he made sure we knew it too. Introducing Parks, he said: “I met Aaron when he was 15. Playin’ his ass off at 15. Graduated college at 18.” Silence from the crowd. “Yeah, I got real quiet when I heard that shit too.”
I’ll never forget Freddie Hubbard calling Blanchard to the Blue Note stage to play “When I Fall in Love,” around 1989. But the last time I heard Blanchard was at the Vanguard in 2000, shortly after Wandering Moon came out. The setting was much more acoustic, but the seeds of the current work were certainly there. They took a break from the originals to play “Autumn Leaves,” fast. And Brice Winston crushed everyone with his tenor solo on a closing midtempo blues. “I think you said it all,” Blanchard told Winston, who shook his head “no.” Indeed, he had way more in store, and he gave us a taste of it at Joe’s Pub.
It’s hard to imagine anyone but these individuals playing Blanchard’s current music. Parks’s synth colors, Loueke’s incredible fingerstyle work and sound-on-sound sculpting, Hodge’s savvy with acoustic and electric basses, Scott’s energized and ultra-modern drumming: Cumulatively, it seemed to awe Blanchard himself. His trumpet was intense but unhurried, penetrating but never the least bit shrill. Was this jazz? Post-jazz? No matter. It was today’s music, and tomorrow’s.
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