Carrington

Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue is an album by Terri Lyne Carrington. It won the 2013 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album.
Drummer and bandleader Terri Lyne Carrington won a Grammy in 2012 for her genre-blurring Mosaic Project, which blended the voices and instruments of an all-female cast in a series of bold musical statements. Here Carrington turns her sights toward revisioning a legendary meeting of jazz minds on the recording of 1963's Money Jungle by Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach. Accompanied by pianist Gerald Clayton, bassist Christian McBride, and a host of guests, Carrington not only reinterprets that album, she adds to its discourse with two of her own compositions and another by Clayton…

Galvanized by seismic changes in the ever-evolving social and political landscape, Grammy Award-winning drummer, producer, activist and educator Terri Lyne Carrington formed her new band, Social Science, to confront a wide spectrum of social justice issues. The band’s stunning debut double album, I, immediately takes its place alongside Carrington’s most ambitious and inventive projects, expressing an inclusive and compassionate view of humanity’s common bonds through an eclectic program melding jazz, R&B, classic and indie rock, free improvisation, hip-hop and contemporary classical music.

This CD is well worth the wait. Carrington is joined by a number of jazz greats–pianist Herbie Hancock, saxophonist Gary Thomas, guitarists Kevin Eubanks and Paul Bollenback, and trumpeters Wallace Roney and Terence Blanchard. Stylistically, Carrington's drumming is a brilliant blend of Tony Williams's power, Billy Higgins's finesse, and Elvin Jones's African syncopations. She knows that she does not need to blow everybody away with loud solos, so she leads by driving her band mates. She wrote most of the music, which has a '60s, Miles Davis feel. "Jazz Is" is a spectral opus featuring actor Malcolm Jamal Warner on spoken word and bass. "Lost Star" swings with a Live at the Plugged Nickel vibe, while her take on Wayne Shorter's classic "Witch Hunt" is a melodically recombinant version for this century.