30 years into his career, saxophonist Redman moves to seminal New York jazz label Blue Note. Side-stepping his quartet’s typically hard-swinging, rhythmically charged work, Where Are We is a melodic beauty and plays out as his first vocal album: Redman combines lyrical tenor lines with the soaring voice of Gabrielle Cavassa.
Written by Ben Beaumont-Thomas, Ammar Kalia and Andrew Clements
From its inception, the Blue Note label has stood for “The Finest In Jazz.” The same can be said for Joshua Redman. Over the past three decades, the saxophonist, composer, and bandleader has consistently demonstrated how to honor the music’s verities while expanding its reach in contemporary settings. On where are we, Redman’s first recording as a Blue Note artist, he delivers one of his most challenging and compelling albums to date, in a program featuring typically brilliant supporting partners and (in a first for Redman) built around a dynamic vocalist.
Redman admits that an entire project with voice had long been at the back of his mind. “Doing a record with a vocalist was something I thought I’d probably get to eventually,” he explains, laughing, “but that ‘eventually’ was starting to sound like glorified procrastination or avoidance!... Honestly, I think I was kind of torn. I’ve always had a sort of ‘rhythm section envy’ — wishing I could be more of an embedded participant in an underlying, supportive groove — but at the same time, I think in my primary role as a saxophonist in instrumental groups, I was used to being a lead voice, and I secretly didn’t want to relinquish all that melodic control! Maybe being locked down during the pandemic gave me time (too much time!) to think about all of this… I guess I decided I was ‘ready.’”
He found the perfect partner in young vocalist Gabrielle Cavassa. “I had maybe heard Gabrielle’s name from her time in the Bay Area,” Redman notes, “but I wasn’t at all familiar with her music. One night in the Fall of 2021, my manager texted me in the middle of Gabrielle’s performance at a party in New Orleans. ‘You’ve got to hear this young lady,’ she said. ‘This is not a concert, it’s a casual event, and she is just riveting.’ Once I heard Gabrielle, I realized that she has an expressive quality and an intimacy and a vulnerability in her sound that is singularly captivating.”
Having found a collaborator, Redman embarked on what proved to be a unique process. “Most of my previous recordings grew out of bands that had played and toured together consistently, and eventually developed a vibe and chemistry and repertoire to the point where we felt like we had to record. But in this case, while I had worked with each of the other instrumentalists many times before in a wide variety of settings, we hadn’t yet played all at the same time in the same group; and Gabrielle and I had literally never made a note of music together.”
The resulting program is “not really about the pandemic itself,” Redman stresses, “but the uniquely isolating conditions of that time certainly played a role in the music’s creation. The geographic flavor was probably born in part out of my own lockdown-induced wanderlust… And from a practical standpoint, Gabrielle and I basically had to plan everything virtually. (Never in my life have I talked so much art through text!) By the time I visited New Orleans to scout recording studios and finally meet her in person, we had already selected the band and picked almost all of the tunes.”
In the spirit of Woody Guthrie, Bruce Springsteen, and the other troubadours whose music comprises the program, where are we tours the U.S.A. (past, present, and perhaps even future), with shadings and alternative visions provided through mash-ups from different genres and generations. “The mash-ups were a secondary concept that first emerged while I was considering an arrangement of ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco,’ and then Monk’s ‘San Francisco Holiday’ just sort of popped unannounced into my head,” Redman acknowledges. “When I saw that this sort of thing might work, I kept rolling with it… The San Francisco connection was just a cute little inside wink — a quick cable-car-like flourish in the middle of an otherwise slow and steady swinging ballad — but other combinations took on different trajectories.” A sliver of Charles Ives’ ‘Three Places in New England’ complements and contrasts the mood of ‘New England,’ a rare tune from a Betty Carter album; whereas the duality of ‘Stars Fell on Alabama’ and John Coltrane’s ‘Alabama’ “quite consciously juxtaposes two very different views and experiences of the American South… ‘Chicago Blues’ is sort of our present-day re-imagining of the Count Basie and Jimmy Rushing classic ‘Goin to Chicago.’ Gabrielle took some of the original stanzas and out of them fashioned her own, more personal and intimate, lyrical approach. I took melodic and harmonic motifs from Sufjan Stevens’ ‘Chicago’ and wove them into and around the blues form. I feel like what we did there was probably the most integrated, the most original, and maybe also the most successful, blending of the bunch.”
Finding musicians who fit the needs of what is fundamentally a ballads album was the relatively easy part for Redman, who has formed more memorable ensembles than can be counted on the fingers of one hand. “The musical mood is primarily slow, soft, lyrical, and romantic,” he says, “but also with darkness and longing and even sometimes anguish. I wanted musicians who were willing to embrace the beauty, the melancholy, and the mystery.” He found them in drummer Brian Blade, whose relationship with the saxophonist goes back to the beginnings of their respective careers; pianist Aaron Parks, a partner in the collective quartet James Farm; and more recent associate Joe Sanders on bass. “I was amazed that neither Aaron nor Joe had played with Brian before, but I knew they would inhabit this music together soulfully and brilliantly — sublimely and ethereally and poetically, but at the same time with a deep, earthy, visceral groove.”
For added perspective, Redman invited four other friends to contribute to the portraits of their native cities: guitarists Kurt Rosenwinkel (“Streets of Philadelphia”) and Peter Bernstein (“Manhattan”), vibraphonist Joel Ross (“Chicago Blues”), and trumpeter Nicholas Payton (“Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?”). “I’ve always been deeply suspicious of concept albums in jazz, especially when they are my own!” Redman jokes, “and there is obviously a fair amount of concept here lurking in the background. But I didn’t want it to in any way mess with the organic, spontaneous making of the music. I don’t think I ever explicitly mentioned the hometown connection aspect to anyone… I had to laugh a few days after we recorded ‘Manhattan’ when Berns called me up and said ‘Oh, ok, I get it!’”
Yet there is a concept, and it is both timely and brilliantly executed. Redman opens with an improvisation on “This Land is Your Land,” introducing his lone original, “After Minneapolis.” “That began as an instrumental composition. I actually wrote it on May 31, 2020, six days after the murder of George Floyd,” he reports. “It wasn’t till over a year-and-a-half later that I took a crack at setting it to words. I had never written lyrics before, to anything.” After a musical roadtrip in which Cavassa and the quartet evoke impressions of eight other cities and regions, the music arrives at Coltrane’s “Alabama,” surrounding the classic ballad “Stars Fell on Alabama,” another of the musical juxtapositions addressing the destruction done to lives that matter. Still, as Redman cautions, “Even though those tracks [‘After Minneapolis’ and ‘Alabama’] more or less bookend the album, they are not the entire, or necessarily even the primary, message. If anything, the music is about considering the myriad things this country is thought to be, might be, and could be. It’s about American dream, American myth, American romance, and American reality, and how they can all co-exist in combination and proximity and tension. It’s at once a celebration, an examination, and a meditation — more a set of questions or contemplations, than any sort of clear definitive statement.”
The final word is given to a composition with a more amorphous locale. “‘Where Are You?’ is one of the last songs we thought about doing,” the saxophonist recalls. “I knew that Gabrielle played some guitar, and I thought about adding a bossa nova touch… It really clicked for all of us in the studio — one of the rare times where we were all listening together in the control room on playback and were like, ‘yeah, cool, this works, it’s good, we’re done.’… It only hit me later, listening to the rough a few weeks after the session, that Gabrielle could be singing this song about America, to America; and at that moment one of the central themes of the project became clear.” What began as a formal concept allowing two unacquainted artists to organize their ideas – something that could be discarded if necessary over time – had gained a deeper significance. “This was an album whose meaning revealed itself in the making.”
where are we will leave listeners seeking to define where they, and we, are — inspired by the latest example of Joshua Redman at his finest.
Written by Cem Kurosman
Side A
After Minneapolis (face toward mo[u]rning)
Lyrics written by Joshua Redman, Music written by Joshua Redman and Woodie Guthrie
2. Streets Of Philadelphia
Written by Bruce Springsteen
3. Chicago Blues
Written by Count Basie, James Rushing, Sufjan Stevens
Side B
1. Baltimore
Written by Gabriel Kahane
2. By The Time I Get To Phoenix
Written by Jimmy Webb
Side C
1. Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?
Written by Eddie DeLange and Louis Alter
2. Manhattan
Written by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers
3. My Heart In San Francisco (Holiday)
Written by Joshua Redman, Douglass Cross, George Cory, Thelonious Monk
4. That’s New England
Written by Joshua Redman, Charles Ives, James Sinclair
Side D
Alabama (intro)
Written by John Coltrane
2. Stars Fell On Alabama
Written by Frank S. Perkins and Mitchell Parish
3. Alabama
Written by John Coltrane
4. Where Are You?
Written by Jimmy McHugh, Harold Adamson
Saxophonist Joshua Redman, one of the most acclaimed and charismatic jazz artists to have emerged in the past 30 years, has signed to Blue Note Records, the legendary label and standard bearer of The Finest In Jazz Since 1939. Redman will release his Blue Note debut where are we this Fall and will be touring the project across the United States and Europe following the album’s release. Stay tuned to joshuaredman.com/tour for touring updates.
“I am so deeply honored and just flat-out thrilled to be joining the Blue Note family,” says Redman. “Blue Note albums have forever been an essential part of my musical (and spiritual) life — since well before I realized I even had one! I look forward, with equal parts gratitude and giddiness, to embarking on this new phase in my recording journey, along with one of the greatest labels of all time.”
“Over the last three decades, Joshua Redman has set the bar for courageous musical innovation and soulful expression,” says Blue Note President Don Was. “He is the living embodiment of the Blue Note ethos and it’s a dream come true to welcome him to the label.”
* * *
Born in Berkeley, California, Redman is the son of legendary saxophonist Dewey Redman and dancer Renee Shedroff. He was exposed at an early age to a variety of musics (jazz, classical, rock, soul, Indian, Indonesian, Middle Eastern, African) and instruments (recorder, piano, guitar, gatham, gamelan), and began playing clarinet at age nine before switching to what became his primary instrument, the tenor saxophone, one year later. The early influences of John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Cannonball Adderley, and his father—as well as The Beatles, Aretha Franklin, the Temptations, Earth, Wind and Fire, Prince, The Police, and Led Zeppelin—drew Joshua more deeply into music. But although he loved playing the saxophone, academics were always his priority and he never seriously considered becoming a professional musician.
In 1991 Redman graduated from Harvard College summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in Social Studies. He had already been accepted by Yale Law School, but deferred entrance for what he believed was only going to be one year. Some of his musician friends had recently relocated to Brooklyn, and they were looking for another housemate to help with the rent. Redman accepted their invitation to move in, and almost immediately he found himself immersed in the New York jazz scene. He began jamming and gigging regularly with some of the leading jazz musicians of his generation: Peter Bernstein, Larry Goldings, Kevin Hays, Roy Hargrove, Geoff Keezer, Leon Parker, Jorge Rossy, and Mark Turner, among others. In November of that year, five months after moving to New York, Redman won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition. This was only one of the more visible highlights from a year that saw Redman beginning to tour and record with jazz masters such as his father, Jack DeJohnette, Charlie Haden, Elvin Jones, Joe Lovano, Pat Metheny, Paul Motian, and Clark Terry.
Now fully committed to a life in music, Redman was quickly signed by Warner Bros. Records and issued his self-titled debut album in the spring of 1993, which subsequently earned Redman his first GRAMMY nomination. That fall saw the release of Wish, where Joshua was joined by the all-star cast of Pat Metheny, Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins. MoodSwing followed in 1994 and introduced his first permanent band, which included three other young musicians who have gone on to become some of the most important and influential artists in modern jazz: pianist Brad Mehldau, bassist Christian McBride, and drummer Brian Blade.
Redman continued to release a series of celebrated recordings including Freedom in the Groove, Timeless Tales (for Changing Times), and Beyond with a variety of different band line-ups, establishing himself as one of the music’s most consistent and successful bandleaders. An affiliation with Nonesuch Records began in 2005 with the album Momentum and saw the release of a wide range of projects including the duo album Nearness with Mehldau, The Bad Plus Joshua Redman, Still Dreaming, and the reunion of his quartet with Mehldau, McBride, and Blade on RoundAgain and LongGone.
Redman was a founding member of the SFJAZZ Collective and has recorded and performed with musicians including Ray Brown, Dave Brubeck, Chick Corea, The Dave Matthews Band, Bill Frisell, Herbie Hancock, Roy Haynes, Milt Jackson, Quincy Jones, Big Daddy Kane, B.B. King, The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, DJ Logic, Yo Yo Ma, Branford Marsalis, John Medeski, Marcus Miller, MeShell Ndegeocello, Nicholas Payton, Simon Rattle, Dianne Reeves, The Rolling Stones, The Roots, Kurt Rosenwinkel, John Scofield, Toots Thielemans, McCoy Tyner, Cedar Walton, Stevie Wonder, and many more. Redman has been nominated for ten GRAMMY Awards and has garnered top honors in critics and readers polls of DownBeat, Rolling Stone, and more. He wrote and performed the music for Louis Malle’s final film Vanya on 42nd Street and is both seen and heard in the Robert Altman film Kansas City.
In 1993, six months before recording their album 'MoodSwing', Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride and Brian Blade performed Newport Jazz Festival.
The quartet is set to return to Newport Thirty years later, following the release of 'RoundAgain' and 'LongGone'. For tickets and festival information visit www.newportjazz.org.
The members of the original, legendary 1990s Joshua Redman Quartet – Joshua Redman (saxophone), Brad Mehldau (piano), Christian McBride (bass), and Brian Blade (drums) – reunited twenty-six years after their 1994 debut album, MoodSwing, to record RoundAgain in 2020. They followed up that acclaimed release with LongGone in 2022, featuring original Redman compositions from the RoundAgain recording sessions, plus a live performance of the MoodSwing track “Rejoice,” captured by SFJAZZ at the San Francisco Jazz Festival.
"Musical soulmates reunite to stunning effect," the Guardian exclaims, naming LongGone its Jazz Album of the Month.
"These two releases [RoundAgain and LongGone] pose the question of whether there has ever been such a reunion of elevated pedigree in the jazz oeuvre," says Glide magazine: "John Coltrane’s come-and-go with Miles Davis’ in the Sixties comes to mind, but this four-way regrouping would appear to be a phenomenon unto itself." “T record is very much akin to the occasion wherein old friends meet up again after a prolonged interval apart and … find out that the traits that first brought them together not only remain in plentiful supply but have grown all the more abiding with the passage of time.”
RoundAgain, the group’s first recording since 1994’s MoodSwing, debuted at No. 1 on the Current Traditional Jazz Albums chart in the US and at No. 1 on the Jazz & Blues chart in the UK. The album received two Grammy nominations. NPR called it “a flawless effort,” stating that the four musicians have “only gotten better in that time” and are each “at the very top of his game now.”
“Musicians with a scary level of talent playing into the moment,” says the New York Times. “The blend of outside influences into a consensual jazz language, the polyrhythmic play, the scholarly bravado: All those things felt fresh for these musicians in the 1990s ... There’s something undeniable—consoling, even—about hearing them remain true to it today.”
Redman says of his first group as a bandleader, which was together for approximately a year and a half: “I realized almost immediately that this band wouldn’t stay together for very long. They were without a doubt, for our generation, among the most accomplished and innovative on their respective instruments. I knew better than anyone else just how incredibly lucky I was to have even that short time with them.”