Alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, with his fiery Hero Trio, featuring his longtime musical associates François Moutin on bass and Rudy Royston on drums, will perform their music at Berlin Jazz Club in Minneapolis at 7:00 PM on November 4th, 2026.
Rudresh Mahanthappa’s trio released the album Hero Trio in 2020 that covers the tunes of his heroes. They honor musical influences, exploring the music of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Stevie Wonder, Keith Jarrett, Ornette Coleman, and Johnny Cash. As in the lyrics of Cash’s “Ring of Fire” this album “… burns, burns, burns.” It made my list of the top albums for 2020. Downbeat Magazine gave it a four star review. They followed up with Animal Crossing in 2022.
Mahanthappa first joined forces with Royston and Moutin over a decade ago for Bird Calls, a quintet album that paid unconventional tribute to Charlie Parker with new pieces reconfiguring material from Bird’s iconic compositions. Hero Trio grew out of that project, with Mahanthappa turning his arranger’s vision on material from a variety of eclectic sources.
Mahanthappa has been named alto saxophonist of the year nine times in DownBeat magazine’s Critics’ Polls and six times by the Jazz Journalists Association. He won alto saxophonist of the year in the 2015-2018 and 2020 JazzTimes Magazine Critics’ Polls and was named the Village Voice’s “Best Jazz Artist” in 2015. He has also received the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, and he is currently the Anthony H. P. Lee ‘79 Director of Jazz at Princeton University.
Read bios of the musicians and get tickets at: https://www.berlinmpls.com/calendar/rudresh-mahanthappa-hero-trio
