When saxophonist and bandleader Joshua Redman returns to Houston, he’ll bring music from his latest project, where we are.
The album, on which every track references a specific U.S. location, marks the first time Redman has collaborated with a vocalist, Gabrielle Cavassa, or as Redman puts it, the first time he’s stuck his “little pinky toe into the vast, tumultuous waters of art with words.”
“I’m a jazz saxophonist. I’m an instrumental jazz musician. It’s been my stock and trade, my bread and butter,” says Redman. “My lifelong journey has been trying to express thoughts and feelings and experiences primarily through a language that is not a literal language, a language of notes and rhythms and whatnot.”
On January 26, Redman, Cavassa, pianist Paul Cornish, bassist Philip Norris and drummer Nazir Ebo will present this “very unique project” at the Wortham Theater Center, courtesy of DACAMERA.
Interpretations of work from artists like Count Basie, Charles Ives and John Coltrane make up this tour of America, with Redman contributing one original composition to the album, “After Minneapolis (face toward mo[u]rning),” written in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. Originally an instrumental piece, Redman decided to add lyrics – the first, and he jokes maybe the last time he’ll ever write lyrics.
“I was very uncomfortable in the process, but I went through the process,” says Redman. “It’s probably the only song that I can point to that I’ve written that directly refers to any real event. I’ve never written songs about things or people or events so that was a departure.”
For Redman, jazz is “a music of the moment,” saying that “the beauty of jazz is the flexibility of it, and the way in which a song can speak specifically to the moment at hand, meaning the moment that we are playing it.” It’s one thing he says that’s always attracted him to instrumental music and, specifically, improvising instrumental music: its broad interpretability.
“Music can really be anything to anyone,” adds Redman.
But on where we are, most of the songs, like “After Minneapolis,” have lyrics and, of course, those lyrics have meanings.
“Most of the songs that we picked, even with words, there is a range of interpretability…but this is different in the sense that maybe certain meanings are a little bit more hardwired into the music than what I’m used to,” says Redman.
The second track on the album, Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia,” is one with lyrics that made it on the album to even Redman’s surprise.
“I never thought a Bruce Springsteen song would be one that I would feel comfortable interpreting as a jazz musician,” says Redman. “I just never thought that his musical world was one that would connect naturally and organically with my own.”
“Streets of Philadelphia,” in particular, Redman says, is “far away from the world of acoustic instrumental jazz.”
“It’s not even a typical Springsteen song,” says Redman of the song, famously featured in the 1993 Tom Hanks-Denzel Washington film Philadelphia. “It’s not like the E Street Band. It’s a drum machine and some keyboards. It’s very affecting. It’s very moving.”
Redman ultimately attributes the track’s success to Cavassa’s connection to the lyrics and her ability to deliver them with authenticity.
“Once she had the connection and felt she could do it, then I felt like I could build a world around it with the group. We could transform it and put our own sort of groove on it and our own harmonies on it,” says Redman.
As the album travels around the U.S. – with stops in Chicago (“Chicago Blues”), Phoenix (“By the Time I Get to Phoenix”) and San Francisco (“My Heart in San Francisco”) – it’s both a celebration and a critique, with Redman noting that some songs, like “After Minneapolis” or “Alabama,” just can’t be played casually.
“I would love for some people to feel like they were entertained by the show, or definitely uplifted, or moved, or intrigued, or provoked, or affected in some way by the music, but we aren’t primarily playing entertainment music,” says Redman.
Though he doesn’t want to sound “like some sort of ivory tower artist,” Redman acknowledges that jazz is a very abstract and complex musical language with complex harmonies and forms.
Or, simply put, “Jazz is some crazy ass music,” says Redman with a laugh.
“I know as a jazz musician – especially as an instrumental jazz musician playing modern acoustic jazz – a lot of stuff that we play, it’s not moving everyone in the audience,” adds Redman. “It’s not connecting at every moment with everyone in the audience in the same way that we may be connecting with it, and I’m okay with that. You learn to be okay with that from very early on.”
But when the group plays a song with a message that is “fairly grave and fairly intense,” like “After Minneapolis” or John Coltrane’s “Alabama,” Redman admits to feeling “a little guiltier” if it doesn’t connect with the audience. There have even been moments where he’s found himself questioning if it was right to play these songs at certain times, but ultimately, it’s part of the album’s meaning and message.
“I feel like I have a responsibility to try to articulate this and to try to play it even if I’m not 100 percent sure that I am ready to play it right now or that folks are ready to hear it,” says Redman. “Sometimes there’s a little bit more of a sense of tension between what I might find personally desirable and what I feel our responsibility is in trying to represent some sort of breadth of what the American experience is.”
The Joshua Redman Group will perform at 8 p.m. on Friday, January 26, at Wortham Theater Center, 501 Texas. For more information, call 713-524-5050 or visit dacamera.com. $46-$86.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
