A Théâtre Maisonneuve in full capacity to return, last night, to the composer and pianist Robert Glasper, who came to spread the good jazz, soul and hip-hop music that made him famous since his debut with new singer Bilal at the end of the 1990 years and up to his trilogy of albums black radioThe last one appeared in February. Glaspear and his three-caliber escorts hit the target point, resulting in two hours of free-flowing, shaggy grooves.
Created in 1994 to “honor the world-renowned jazz artist, his work and contribution to the renewal of the genre,” the new Miles-Davis Prize was first rolled out to photographers accepting his trophy, before our launch: “See You Soon” and DJ Jahi Sundance left alone With the Montreal crowd.
wear BrickBits For a good twenty minutes, I transitioned from rap to old-school rap, playing in one file a few pieces of classics that didn’t fail to get the experts engaged, before being joined by a full orchestra. We emphasize this because in retrospect, and without us realizing it, DJ Jahi Sundance was already paving the way for the rest of the performance, literally and figuratively: the Glasper concert was, in essence, a long mixture of musical cues, bits of musical themes drawn from his own repertoire and drawn from The compositions of the composers he likes, knit together as a DJ does to eventually form a long, continuous performance (almost).
“Jazz is the father and mother of hip-hop, two music genres born of oppression, two kinds of hardcore music,” Glaspear already said in an interview with NPR. At yesterday’s concert, he not only made that claim but also showed how his intimate knowledge of hip-hop can now give birth to a new expression of jazz. In order to be able to deliver a concert like the one from yesterday, you need to know deeply where the samples of jazz recordings recycled by rappers come from, understand how they recontextualize them, and then recycle these ideas, rhythms, and harmonics in turn, in the context of a jazz performance.
Hearing him turn jazz into rap, into soul, into R&B, and then back into jazz is enlightening. Utilizing the exceptional talent of drummer Chris Dave (who kept the rhythm close to Kenny Garrett twenty years ago in particular) to achieve this made his job easier. This guy is drum machine With a pounding heart and hands of astonishing precision – in the middle of the concert, during a moment of relaxation, Glasper challenged him to reproduce breaks from rap and R&B recordings, in which he apparently put his nose into his chopsticks.
Glasper, on keyboards and vocals, debuted with I found you (from the album ArtScience, 2016), and one would like to say that the song, or at least its soul, spanned more than 90 minutes. Between the beginning and the end, a rhythmic and melody pause, always supported by soul, funk, hip-hop, and the fusion of these genres with jazz. We heard it over and over again smells like teen spirit by Nirvana, in a Falling Soul fashion for his studio version on First Black Radio (2012), to put it in a fantastic no one like you (more ArtScience). At a single boil bend of Rhodes, he chanted a few bars In the air tonight by Phil Collins, adapted Look of love Written by Burt Bacharach In a long segment dedicated to the memory of influential hip-hop composer J. Della, the percussion section (completed by Bernice Travis on the bass, expert presence and erased even his luxurious solo performance at the end of the concert) astoundingly visionary grooves of the late beat maker.
Sometimes a theme fired up might reappear after about twenty minutes of impromptu sequences — structurally everything looked randomly like the first twenty minutes given by DJ Jahi Sundance who, throughout the concert, added scratches and sound effects to his teammates’ game. A smooth prom, completely disjointed, yet cohesive from start to finish. It earned him a well-deserved warm welcome.