WALLACE RONEY
Jazz

Highnote

For many casual listeners, Wallace Roney is known as a student of Miles Davis as well as Davis’ literal understudy at the Montreaux Jazz Festival months before his death. Roney toured with the reconstructed second great quintet following Davis’ death, so his connection is certainly a real one. At the same time, Roney also worked with Art Blakey, and took lessons from Clark Terry and Dizzy Gillespie. He is unique (or nearly unique) among players of his vintage in that he learned and was apprenticed to the living jazz masters of the day. From them he learned his craft well, as well as an approach that emphasizes the long-term view of musicmaking rather than the merely new and novel.

On Jazz, his latest release, he completes the trilogy of Highnote recordings that began with 2004’s Prototype and continued in 2005 with Mystikal. All three recordings show a mature Roney at the peak of his considerable powers. Not only can he play up a storm, he is able to construct fusions of elements of jazz ranging from late-60s post-bop to free jazz, rock, hip-hop, jam band, whatever you want to call it. In Roney’s hands this volatile mixture becomes an incredibly tasty brew. Yeah, Miles still informs some of Roney’s stance, vision, and even his sound, but the student has been able to make sense of combinations of musical genres that sometimes eluded his teacher.

For all the edginess of Roney’s work, it always remains highly accessible almost any jazz-interested listener. It’s modern enough for modernists, yet even traditionalists must admit there is a base of sheer musicality here that is missing from many similar efforts. For those who like their jazz lyrical, there are beautiful moments aplenty—the piano solo by Roney’s wife, pianist Geri Allen leading into an edgier Roney solo. Brother Antoine Roney is on hand on soprano and tenor sax, also adding bass clarinet to “Fela’s Shrine.” Tracks such as this and “Revolution:Resolution” demonstrate how Roney is able to make his own stand in territory suggested on some of Miles’ recordings. The addition of turntables, often problematic for jazz groups, is handled well here, although as always, it never truly seems integrated into the band.

Another incredibly cool moment on Jazz is Roney’s arrangements of the old Sly and the Family Stone tune “Stand.” Following a dramatic opening cadenza by Roney, the rhythm section kicks into a solid but spacey groove. The track features both Geri Allen and Davis alum Robert Irving III on keyboards. The lengthy intro groove (nearing the four minute mark before the melody is heard) and the languid way that Roney unfolds the tune’s melody is brilliant. It allows one to understand more fully the process involved in intelligently combining elements of jazz with elements of funk, soul, and rock music.

Roney titles this disc Jazz as if to reclaim the true idea of fusion—to combine or blend by melting together—as central to jazz as living music rather than some kind of aberration. He makes that case admirably and, in the process, also delivers one of the most truly enjoyable jazz recordings of the year.