Roy Hargrove The Love

The wait is over: Roy Hargrove's “The Love Suite: In Mahogany” is OUT NOW with Blue Engine Records. Captured in 1993 during one of JALC's earliest seasons, this album is the only recording of Hargrove’s original composition— commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center. We are not only honoring Hargrove’s remarkable legacy through this release, but we are also celebrating what would have been his 54th birthday weekend.

Roy Hargrove's second recording as a leader features the 21-year-old trumpeter in late 1990 essentially playing bebop. Joined by altoist Antonio Hart, pianist Stephen Scott, bassist Christian McBride, and drummer Billy Higgins, Hargrove shows why he was so highly rated from the start of his career. On such numbers as "September in the Rain," "End of a Love Affair," "Crazeology," and four of his straight-ahead originals, Hargrove plays in a style not that different from Lee Morgan but with his own soulful sound, revitalizing the jazz tradition with his enthusiastic ideas. A fun set.

The first previously unissued recording of the late trumpeter Roy Hargrove since his passing in 2018. Recorded in 2006 at Merkin Hall at the Kaufman Music Center in NYC and 2007 at the Williams Center at Lafayette College in Easton, PA with piano great Mulgrew Miller. The 2-CD set includes an elaborate booklet with rare photos, essays, interviews and statements by Sonny Rollins, Christian McBride, Common, Ron Carter, Jon Batiste, Karriem Riggins, Keyon Harold, Chris Botti & more.

Following in the well-trod footsteps of Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Clifford Brown, Chet Baker, and Wynton Marsalis, among others, Roy Hargrove has his day with strings, purveying moody, lovelorn ballads at glacial tempos. At first, one's hopes are raised that this could turn out to be one of the best attempts in this field. The leadoff track "You Go to My Head" is gorgeous; Hargrove plays soulfully and inwardly, and pianist Larry Willis's arrangement is emotionally satisfying without being cloying. However, the disc continues on and on in this fashion, one tune seeming to blend into another, one arrangement sounding like the next (besides Willis, who contributes five charts, Gil Goldstein does three others, and Cedar Walton chips in two).