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Hear Wallace Roney at the Jazz Bakery |
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Written by Ronaldo Oregano
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Saturday, 15 October 2005 |
"Don't be stuck in the past but
retain the greatness of it. And live in the moment, live in the
future." -- Wallace Roney
Wallace Roney with Antoine Roney, Eric Allen, Ugonna Okegwo, Robert
Glasper, and DJ Val will perform on October 18th through the 23rd
at th eJazz Bakery in Los Angeles
(www.jazzbakery.org/).
Wallace Roney's new High Note CD, Mystikal, is due to release in
October. With Mystikal, Roney continues to explore the deep, expansive
chemistry he established with his crew on Prototype. Val Jeanty
on turntables provides spoken word interludes and other little "ear cookies"
along the way.
Wallace Roney, while one of the most accomplished and acclaimed
trumpeters in jazz today, remains one of the music's most misunderstood
masters. Roney rose to national prominence in the 1980's as a member of
Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, earning favorable notice as a young lion
with a roaring sound and impressive technique in the Clifford Brown-Lee
Morgan-Freddie Hubbard tradition. By the middle of the decade
Roney was holding down a difficult dual membership with both the
Messengers and Tony Williams' Quintet. Soon he began to display a more
thoughtful and spacious approach to sound and improvisation -- one that
nodded in the direction of Williams' former leader, Miles Davis, who by
that time had befriended the young trumpeter, having given him the blue
horn that is his trademark.
In 1991, at Davis' request, Roney played side-by-side with his mentor
at the Montreux Jazz Festival, performing Gil Evans' classic
arrangements from Miles Ahead and Porgy and Bess with the Quincy
Jones-George Gruntz Orchestras. Wallace's immersion into the
Davis canon and ten years of study with Miles had an understandably
profound effect on his approach to music one that perfectly
suited his own forward-looking artistic vision. On his Warner
Brothers debut cd Misteriosos, the eerie resemblance of the sound of
Roney¹s trumpet to that of Davis caused much of the jazz press,
who were superficially focused on the trumpeter¹s tone while
overlooking his very personal choice of notes, to misguidedly label him
a Davis clone.
 Photo by Don Berryman
While the controversy over Roney's decision to follow a personal
musical path inspired by Davis (among others), loomed large in the
press, other interesting aspects of his career were largely ignored.
Few people knew it was Roney's trumpet playing behind P-Diddy's
Broadway performance of A Raisin in the Sun.
His role as the model for Denzel Washington's performance in Spike
Lee's Mo' Better Blues was virtually unacknowledged, as was his part in
inspiring Quentin Tarrentino to create the Pulp Fiction character
Marsalis Wallis as a composite parody of Roney and fellow Jazz
Messenger alumnus, Wynton Marsalis.
Roney's own life story is every bit as interesting as the cinematic
characters modeled after him. Born in Philadelphia, May 25, 1960,
the young trumpeter's special musical gift was first recognized at the
age of six by Sigmund Hering, the first trumpet chair of the
Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra with whom Wallace would later
study. When police brutality and gang violence threatened his
Philly neighborhood, Roney was sent him to live in Washington, DC,
where he attended the prestigious Duke Ellington School for the Arts,
while playing professionally with his own group. He went on to
study further at Howard University, where he met his future wife,
pianist Geri Allen, and Berklee College in Boston, a prime incubator of
the burgeoning neobop movement, before moving to New York, where he
paid heavy dues before eventually joining Blakey and then Williams.
Wallace would go on to share bandstands and recording studios
with many of the giants of jazz, including Kenny Barron, Sonny
Rollins, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Randy Weston and Chick Corea,
in addition to Miles, but since the beginning of nineties it has been
as the leader of his own bands that the trumpeter made his most
consistently rewarding music. His excellent early efforts on Muse
introduced the world to Roney's skill as composer and bandleader, while
introducing such important young talents as Christian McBride and Jack
Terrason. After recording three fine records for Warner and another
Concord Jazz to finish out the Twentieth Century, Roney has
reestablished himself in the new millennium recording for High Note
Records.
 Ugonna Okegwo
On his latest release, Mystikal, the trumpeter continues in the
tradition of Prototype, following his own muse with the same
unit. Describing his fellow band members, the leader proudly
proclaims, "Frankly, I don't think there is anyone better than these
people I've got in this band. They all share that idea of trying to
take the music further." Taking music further is what Wallace
Roney is all about. Just listen to his music and its immediately
evident that his is the sound of the future of jazz.
Wallace Roney
Antoine Roney
Eric Allen, drums
Ugonna Okegwo, bass
Robert Glasper, piano
DJ Val, turntablist
October tour dates:
- Oct 1 - Duke Ellington Jazz Festival, Washington, DC
- Oct 16 Berkeley Jazz School, Berkeley, CA (Performance and
Workshop)
- Oct 18 23 Jazz Bakery, Los Angeles
- Oct 25 SoHo's, Santa Barbara
- Oct 27 Earshot Jazz Festival, Seattle, WA
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 Tuesday, 02 December 2008
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