WALLACE RONEY
At a time when much of the Jazz world seems
content to simply attempt to recreate the past, trumpeter/composer Wallace
Roney follows the true Jazz tradition of utilizing the past to move forward. In
celebration of his 40th birthday, Wallace has marked the occasion
with his first recording for Stretch Records, entitled No Room For
Argument (SCD-9033). A totally cohesive and evocative CD, No Room
For Argument pays powerful tribute to the past greats who inspired it,
while clearly establishing Wallace Roney as a mature artist of deep and
expansive vision.
For those unfamiliar with Wallace's background, he
is another in a long list of extraordinary artists to emerge from Philadelphia,
where he was born on May 25, 1960 and received his early musical training in
that city's renowned Settlement Music School. As a teenager, he moved to
Washington, D.C. and studied at the Duke Ellington High School for the
Performing Arts and then Howard University.
Wallace joined Abdullah Ibrahim's big band in
1979, and in 1980 entered one of the most formidable educational institutions
in Jazz history, the "University" of Art Blakey - the spawning ground
of greats like Clifford Brown, Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan, Kenny Dorham, Horace
Silver and so many more of the music's heavyweights - playing in his big band
before attending
Boston's prestigious Berklee School of Music.
It was during this time that Wallace began a long
working relationship with the late, great Tony Williams. It was also during
these years that Wallace met and was taken under the wing of the legendary
Miles Davis, leading to his selection by Miles to play alongside him in the
historic recreation of the classic '50s Gil Evans/Miles Davis arrangements at
the 1991 Montreux Jazz
Festival, shortly before the great visionary's
passing later that same year.
With two of Miles' trumpets and the profound
lessons of their association in tow, Wallace was the obvious choice for the
1992 Tribute to Miles world tour and recording that reunited Miles'
incredible '60s quintet of Shorter, Williams, Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter.
The result was a Grammy and invaluable experience, as were two other important
musical relationships, with Elvin Jones and Ornette Coleman, whose concept of "harmolodics"
was extremely influential on Wallace's music.
Since then, Wallace has led his own ensembles in
live performance and in recordings for Muse and Warner Brothers Records. Often
unfairly criticized for having a sound resembling Miles, Wallace has clearly
established himself as one of the most provocative and personal soloists on his
instrument. In fact Miles, who was always critical of people who imitated other
musicians,
didn't feel that way about Wallace. He heard
something else, and actually encouraged Wallace.
No Room For Argument should go a long way in silencing his critics forever.
What Wallace has done here is to take one of the most fertile periods in Jazz
history and extend it into the present and future, just as Dizzy Gillespie did
with Louis Armstrong, Clifford Brown with Dizzy, Lee Morgan with Clifford, etc.
etc. And in doing so, he pays great homage to Miles, Coltrane and other greats
who helped Wallace discover his own musical persona.
"This record is my modern version of A
Love Supreme and Filles de Kilimanjaro, like a modern Bitches
Brew," says Wallace - a fact borne out by the brilliant "Homage
& Acknowledgement (Love Supreme/Filles de Kilimanjaro)" which
juxtaposes Miles' melody over the bass line from the opening movement of
Trane's magnificent classic.
"Those two records are my life. I think
they're two of the most important records ever made, not that the others
aren't, but they sum up what all the other records are about."
While this track represents the center of the
music, the title cut that opens the CD represents its conceptual heart and
soul. With snippets of voice samples (programmed by the electronic wizardry of
Val "Gelder" Jeanty) from Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Marcus
Garvey and Deepak Chopra, Wallace's inner sense of personal philosophy is front
and center.
"I've tried to take everything I believe in
and put it on this record. Not that this is the beginning; it's been evolving,
and the music has evolved even further. It's my idea about us as people -
meaning we're all the same people. That's what No Room For Argument
is about."
With those two tracks opening the CD, everything
else falls into place - the blistering "Metropolis" with an
explosively articulate trumpet solo, the hard driving "NeuBeings,"
featuring amazing interplay between Geri Allen's (Wallace's wife) acoustic and
Adam Holzman's electric pianos, along with Wallace's younger brother Antoine's
excellent rhythmic coloring on bass clarinet; the moody, fragmented funk of
"Cygroove," the hard funk of "Virtual Chocolate Cherry,"
and the slow drag/fast shuffle rhythms of "He Who Knows;" and the
beautiful ballads "Midnight Blue" and "Christina." The
latter, written by bassist Buster Williams (whose acoustic playing is remarkable
throughout - powerful, woody, resonant and deeply grooved) is the only
composition other than "Homage & Acknowledgement" that is not a
Wallace original.
Another outstanding track is "Straight No
Nothing," described by Wallace as "a refraction of Thelonious Monk's
'Straight, No Chaser.'"
Describing the approach as "sci-fying"
he speaks of sage advice from Miles, who told him "at some point in the
music you can take 'Body and Soul' and play it in two bars. That's a certain
way you have to think...and hear music."
With Lenny White's drums propelling the session
beautifully and Steve Hall sharing saxophone duties with Antoine, Wallace sums
up this date with "I tried to take all the things I like from Filles,
Love Supreme, Herbie's Mwandishi band and Tony Williams' Lifetime and
put them the way I heard them, with some of the modern harmony keyboard things
that I learned when I was hanging with Miles, and the 'harmolodics' of
Ornette."
The result is resoundingly successful as Wallace
Roney has placed himself squarely in the front line of contemporary Jazz's most
creative and important musicians.
For publicity information, please contact
Don Lucoff of DL Media: 610/667-0501 or don.dlmedia@home.com.
Visitors: