Trombonist/composer Steve Turre was passed the jazz torch early in his career by some of the music’s greatest masters – Art Blakey, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Woody Shaw, and Ray Charles, among others.

In recent years he’s kindled the same flame in a younger crop of rising stars. On his new album, Generations, Turre brings the eras together, inviting still-vital legends to join a gifted band of fresh blood while paying tribute to the elders who have helped shape his sound.

Set for release on September 16th, 2022 via Smoke Sessions Records, Generations features literal second-generation players including the trombonist’s own son, drummer Orion Turre, as well as trumpeter Wallace Roney Jr., whose late father was a close friend and collaborator of Turre’s.

In addition, the core band includes young pianist Isaiah J. Thompson and the more tenured Corcoran Holt on bass, who has been working with Turre for more than a decade.

Over the course of the album this stellar group is joined by the likes of saxophonist James Carter, guitarists Ed Cherry and Andy Bassford, keyboardist Trevor Watkis, bassists Buster Williams and Derrick Barnett, drummers Lenny White and Karl Wright, and percussionist Pedrito Martinez.

“There’s a balance between youth and age,” Turre says, “Age brings wisdom and knowledge, and youth brings enthusiasm and energy. Playing with each of them stretches me in a different way. The elders stretch me in ways of wisdom, but the youngsters fire it up. All of that is inspiring.”

That inspiration bears fruit in one of the most scintillating and eclectic recordings of Turre’s storied career, ranging from burning modal jazz to tender ballads, sophisticated swing to reggae grooves to Latin rhythms, and of course, at the root of everything is the blues. “The blues don’t never get old,” Turre declares. “I like playing the blues. To me, it’s quintessential to American music.”

1. Planting the Ceed (8:46)
2. Dinner with Duke (6:58)
3. Blue Smoke (6:34)
4. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (4:54)
5. Don D. (5:00)
6. Pharoah’s Dance (8:30)
7. Flower Power (8:29)
8. Good People (6:54)
9. Sweet Dreams (6:04)
10. Resistance (8:04)

The album opens with the eventfully cinematic Planting the Ceed, an homage to Cedar Walton (He’s one of my heroes,” Turre says of the great pianist, who was a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers when Turre joined the band in 1973) and then comes an even earlier influence for Turre, as he honors Duke Ellington on the divinely elegant Dinner with Duke, and that is itself followed by the straightforward blues of Blue Smoke (a nod to Turre’s home label for his past four releases and its namesake club, where he’s a regular performer), a veritably simmering rendition of the classic Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, and then we get the Caribbean-reggae appeal of Don D. (a tribute to the legendary Skatalites trombonist Don Drummond) brought forth.

Next up on this wondrous new album is the translucently vibrant Pharoah’s Dance, itself a joint tribute to saxophone titan Pharoah Sanders and the genius pianist McCoy Tyner, and then comes the dreamy ambiance within Flower Power, the Latin-influenced hipsway of Good People, the album rounding out on the gentle, late night balladry of Sweet Dreams, closing on the boisterously determined Resistance (a song about resisting all the negative forces that we must encounter in the world today).

Official Purchase Links