Kurt Rosenwinkel - Heartcore

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Music reviews of Heartcore

Music Review: A brilliant amalgam
Rating: 5 Stars

So when an artist as accomplished as jazz guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel even attempts it, we should take a careful look. When it's pulled off, we have reason to get excited.

Jazz, especially, seems a difficult music to drag into the future, what with its hoary tradition, its huge standards presence, its informal council of ruling elders. So when a bright young upstart like Rosenwinkel teams up with hip-hop producer Q-Tip, one has every reason to be leery of the result.

Well, I'm here to tell you that you can put to rest fears of diluted quasi-jazz, such as you get on, e.g., The Detroit Experiment. What's happening here is that a hip-hop vibe has successfully been mapped onto a genuine jazz esthetic, with the results sounding eminently in tune with an authentic jazz sensibility. That is, we get novelty and tradition working hand-in-hand. An analog might be world jazz such as Egberto Gismonti or the Intercontinentals (Bill Frisell's new band) or Roswell Rudd in Mali have produced. The trick in these musical fusions is to retain an authentic jazz vibe in the presence of alien influences.

Of course, jazz has been doing this sort of thing for a long time. Essentially a blend of African rhythms, European classical harmonies, and some weird Creole vibe, the first jazz that emerged from New Orleans around the turn of the 20th century was itself a hodge-podge. Then Dizzy Gillespie with Afro-Cuban jazz and Sonny Rollins with numbers like "St. Thomas" took it further along. Artists like Andy Narell, Cyro Baptista, Caribbean Jazz Project, and Safa have successfully moved it along new tangents.

The thing that's genuinely original about Rosenwinkel's record is that it's a fusion disc with little or no precedent--not electric Miles, not Weather Report, not MMW, not plugged in Scofield, not Matthew Shipp, not the Greyboy Allstars, not the new Roy Hargrove, not Phish, not Secret Chiefs Three, not Uri Caine, not anything! That's because he manages to retain--at least to these ears--more of an authentic jazz sensibility than, say, Hargrove's Hard Groove, while at the same time evoking a truer hip-hop vibe.

Quite an accomplishment.

But what does it sound like? That's a little hard to describe. A more listener-friendly version of Egberto Gismonti's Brazilian-label records? Kinda, but not quite. Something like Matthew Shipp's ambient-jazz? Again, kinda, but not quite. Probably the closest thing is Brad Mehldau's Largo combined with Chris Potter's Traveling Mercies filtered through some bizarre Frisell/Dave Douglas/Harold Budd/Daniel Lanois vibe, but even that doesn't really catch it.

In any case, I'm absolutely blown away by this disc, which marks not only a giant step forward in Kurt Rosenwinkel's career, but in the future of jazz music.

Another in the astounding string of truly remarkable jazz discs to come out in 2003.

Description of Heartcore

Jazz CDs

• Music > Styles
• Miscellaneous
• Pop