Legendary saxophonist Gary Bartz releases new album on brilliant ‘Jazz Is Dead’ series

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Legendary saxophonist Gary Bartz releases new album on brilliant ‘Jazz Is Dead’ series

For the latest release in the absolutely brilliant Jazz Is Dead series, Los Angeles based producers/multi-instrumentalists Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad have joined forces with legendary saxophonist and composer Gary Bartz on an incredible new full-length album.

Bartz has been at the forefront of some of the greatest recordings over the past six decades, performing alongside Art Blakey, Miles Davis, Pharoah Sanders, Woody Shaw, McCoy Tyner, Jackie McLean and numerous others, while also putting out many groundbreaking records with his own bands, including the spiritual jazz ensemble NTU Troop, and collaborating with the great Mizell Brothers on the jazz-funk anthem “Music Is My Sanctuary”. This past year, Bartz also teamed up with one of the leading group’s among the UK jazz scene, Maisha, on a superb straight-to-disc session for the London-based label, Night Dreamer.

On this new remarkable eight-track album, Younge and Shaheed Muhammad are able to help produce a recording that truly brings together all the different dynamic sides musically that Bartz has explored throughout the years, from spiritual and hard-bop, to fusion and jazz-funk, while pushing the sound forward into new adventurous territory. The session blends together Bartz soulful alto saxophone solos with a fusion of both spiritual and psyched-out jazz-funk, while featuring a heavy-dose of Fender Rhodes and Hammond B3 organ melodies, funky bass and percussion grooves, and on a number of the tracks, some gorgeous vocal choruses. It’s like a beautiful melding of those key elements that created some of Bartz most essential recordings like Harlem Bush Music, Follow, The Medicine Man, Ju Ju Street Songs, Another Planet, and others.

Overall, this is another incredible release from the Jazz Is Dead team, once again capturing the essence of a jazz legend like Gary Bartz and taking the historic richness of his vast sound to new heights. Definitely one of the year’s best albums.