Photo bt Andrea Canter

“Please put those very tired and very old Miles imitator barbs aside: Roney is a terrific Miles-influence trumpeter with amazing chops and tremendous stylistic range” – Dave Wayne, Jazz Weekly

Wallace Roney and his genre-pushing sextet, fusing acoustic and electronic elements, take up residence at the Village Vanguard, March 7-12. An acclaimed prodigy of Miles Davis who has lived up to his early promise, Roney has at the same time faced criticism for his significant similarities to his mentor in tone and expression. His latest recordings and three Grammy Awards have served to dispell accusations of mimicry, proving that the stylistic affinity is in no way a cover for any shortcomings or lack of individuality.

Philadelphia native Wallace Roney was initially pulled into jazz by his father, a boxer and trumpet player with a large record collection. But he was truly inspired hearing Miles Davis. "Miles was my idol from the beginning," he says, but Clifford Brown was his father’s favorite and over time, Roney "just kind of put the two together." Roney was on a music education track from age four when he was a student at Philadelphia’s Settlement School of Music; he started trumpet lessons at age 6. “Even at an early age, I was attracted to the sound and the timbre of the instrument and the power of it and the grace of it.” By the time he enrolled at the Duke Ellington High School for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, he had already made his recording debut; at 17 he had a brief stint in New York playing with Philly Jo Jones and toured with Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand) at 19; by age 20 he had been named Down Beat Best Young Jazz Musician of the Year for two consecutive years. Following studies at Berklee College of Music, Roney was determined to make a living as a musician, sold all of his belongings (including his trumpet!) and moved to New York in 1981 (at age 21) to audition with a borrowed horn for Art Blakey. He won the gig and became an acclaimed member of the Jazz Messengers. Recently he told All About Jazz, “Art Blakey taught me about the integrity of the music. He believed that this music was special and he imparted that to all of us, and that we shared an obligation to take it serious…when you play it with your heart, it means something and it gets across to the audience. It is not really ‘entertainment.’ music. It was music for the soul, which I got from Art Blakey.”

Roney was still using a borrowed trumpet when Miles Davis first heard him at Radio City Music Hall in 1983, offering the young musician one of his own horns. Thus Roney became the only trumpeter to be directly mentored by Miles Davis, a relationship that culminated in collaboration at the 1991 Montreux Jazz Festival (recorded as Miles and Quincy at Montreux) shortly before Davis’ death. And despite Davis’ advice to the contrary, Roney left Blakey to join Tony Williams’ Quintet in 1986; he also performed with David Murray, Slide Hampton, John Hicks, and Charlie Rouse. At the end of the decade, Roney was twice named as Best Trumpeter to Watch in the Down Beat Magazine's Critic's Poll. At about this time, Roney began recording and performing as the leader of his own ensembles, appearing on the Muse label with Gary Thomas and Kenny Garrett. After Davis’s death, Roney came together with Williams, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Wayne Shorter in a series of live tributes (billed as VSOP) to the late trumpet king (released in 1994 as A Tribute to Miles). He also filled Miles’ trumpet chair in Gerry Mulligan’s Rebirth of the Cool project. Still trying to find critical acceptance for his own music, such projects may have fueled the claims that he was merely a Miles imitator. “The industry wasn’t giving me the opportunity to play my own music,” Roney recalls.

Charnett Moffet

In the 90s he made several recordings for Warner Brothers and Concord/Stretch. Now on High Note Records, Roney released Prototype in 2004 and will issue Mystikal in October. Roney’s latest work pulls in “stuff I hear today, the new synthesizers and the new sounds that appeal to me. I bring all those elements together and still try to play what I consider straight-ahead, innovative music.”

The current Wallace Roney Sextet is a family affair, featuring Roney’s brother Antoine on soprano and tenor sax, and wife, the acclaimed Geri Allen, on acoustic and electric piano. A product of the great jazz tradition of Detroit, Allen studied jazz with Marcus Belgrave, earned a degree in jazz studies at Howard University in Washington DC (where she met husband Wallace Roney), and studied jazz piano in New York with the great Kenny Barron. In the 1980s she was a member of the M-Base Collective; in the early 90s she worked with Ornette Coleman. She has since released a series of acclaimed recordings as leader (including 2004’s Life of a Song with Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette) while teaching at Howard University. In 1996 she became the first woman to be awarded the Jazzpar Prize in Denmark, the only international jazz award.