four mfs playin' tunes

We are so pleased to announce that iTunes picked the Branford Marsalis Quartet’s Four MFs Playin’ Tunes as the Best Instrumental Jazz Album of 2012! Find Four MFs and other iTunes Best of 2012 picks here.

Publication: All About Jazz
Author: R.J. DeLuke
Date: December 10, 2012

Musicians evolve, and so do bands, if they’re allowed to stay together long enough to develop their musical relationships—that certain chemistry. Such is the case with Branford Marsalis, the outstanding saxophonist who has been through so much in his storied career. It’s also the case with his band, which he has kept together, with few personnel changes, for more than a decade. They are a tight unit that continues to ripen. Read more »

Publication: Jazziz
Author: Josef Woodard
Date: November 29, 2012

Four MFs Playin’ Tunes sports a fitting package and moniker. Each member of the Branford Marsalis Quartet — tenor/soprano saxophonist Marsalis, pianist Joey Calderazzo, bassist Eric Revis and drummer Justin Faulkner — is featured on a single panel of the insert, while the others appear in blurred focus behind him. And the players more than live up to the designation of mother****ers — a term of highest praise in this context.

Marsalis is a wise and humble leader, who willingly shares the spotlight. Read more »

Publication: Pasatiempo
Author: Paul Weideman
Date: October 12, 2012

This album opens with pianist Joey Calderazzo’s “The Mighty Sword.” He and soprano saxophonist Branford Marsalis trade leads over a dynamite rumbling-strings, symbal-crashing foundation by bassist Eric Revis and new drummer Justin Faulkner - he joined three years ago, while Revis and Calderazzo go back with Marsalis to 1997’s Music Evolution. The leader said they could have done the Four MFs program in one day, as things used to be done at Blue Note Records, but those were often simple blues laid down like jam sessions. “The tunes on this record are very difficult, but we are tight enough to make them sound easy, ” Marsalis says on his website. “The difference is that we are a working band.”

Read more »

Publication: Des Moines Register
Author: Joe Lawler
Date: November 11, 2012 

“It was great to see your concert.” Branford Marsalis hears that kind of compliment regularly, and as a musician, it used to perplex him a bit — that people were there to see him, not to hear him.

But now he understands that people listen to records but want to see a performer live on stage, and he wishes more jazz musicians would take that to heart.

“People hear with their eyes,” Marsalis said during a phone interview. “You watch a lot of jazz musicians play now, and they don’t look like they’re into it. Someone will finish a solo and stare at their nails while another guy is soloing. I’m not talking about a dance show, but just sitting around doesn’t really suit what we’re trying to do.”

Marsalis said his quartet doesn’t plan out what it is going to do on stage. When pianist Joey Calderazzo stands up while performing, it’s because he’s feeling it in a song. When drummer Justin Fauklner gets his arms and legs moving like crazy, it’s to make sure the music is moving at the proper beat. But it’s a lot more entertaining to watch than four men calmly playing their instruments. Read more »

Publication: The Republic (Arizona)
Author: Ed Masley
Date: November 6, 2012

Branford Marsalis is about to bring the latest version of his jazz quartet — with Joey Calderazzo on piano, Eric Revis on bass and Justin Faulkner on drums — to the Musical Instrument Museum on the heels of releasing a brilliant new album amusingly titled “Four MFs Playin’ Tunes.”

But Marsalis has long since moved on from that album in his mind. It’s been a year since they recorded it. And he’s not living in the past.

The saxophonist graciously agreed to share his thoughts on everything from “Four MFs” to what it meant to add a teenage drummer to the lineup in a thought-provoking interview that lasted nearly 30 minutes without ever making its way to the intended second question.

Question: The new album sounds amazing. I’d assume you’re pretty happy with the way it turned out?

Answer: I was, yeah. But we’re mentally on to the next thing (laughs).

Q: Already?

A: Oh yeah, man. The only thing our records do is document our progress or lack thereof. There’s growth and improvement or there’s just monotony. As Sonny Rollins told me, “Some of my colleagues have found something that works really well for them and they repeat that thing over and over again. And that’s cool, ’cause the hard thing to do is to find that one thing that works.” But for him, it’s always been about expanding and stretching and trying things, not standing still. And I agree. Read more »

Publication: DANSR.com
Author: Sean Packard
Date: November 2, 2012

NEA Jazz Master and Grammy Award®-winning saxophonist Branford Marsalis has established himself as a world class artist – both jazz and classical, as a bandleader, composer, and as head of the Marsalis Music Record Label.  Marsalis leads one of the finest jazz quartets today, and performs frequently as a classical soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Pops, and the New York Philharmonic.   Read more »

Publication: Nippertown!
Author: J Hunter
Date: October 19, 2012

BRANFORD MARSALIS QUARTET
Four MFs Playin’ Tunes
(Marsalis Music)

“Nothing to see here; everything’s under control.” That’s the underlying message of the title to the first Branford Marsalis Quartet disc without longtime drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts. That’s a big loss to the bottomless musical hive-mind that is the BMQ, but between their rip-snorting Proctors show in February and the cockeyed bop that drives MFs whirling opener “The Mighty Sword,” it sounds like 20-year old wunderkind Jason Faulkner has been assimilated just fine, thank you very much. He bubbles and bashes and bangs, while volcanic pianist Joey Calderazzo shows he’s light-years from the time when he was “that new guy” who replaced the late Kenny Kirkland. Read more »

Publication: The Abso!ute Sound
Author: Bill Milkowski
Date: October 1, 2012

This wryly-titled offering is the first to feature drummer Justin Faulkner, who replaced Jeff “Tain” Watts in the BMQ lineup in 2009 at age 18. This 180-gram double LP (also released on CD) is an immaculate-sounding collection that puts a premium on melody, though not at the expense of virtuosic soloing. Pianist Joey Calderazzo, a BMQ member since 1998, has matured into a first-rate composer and stellar improviser who relies less on his considerable chops than he did when he broke in with Michael Brecker’s group in the early 90s. His riff-oriented “The Mighty Sword” is as memorable as anything he’s ever written while his ethereal “As Summer Into Autumn Slips” beautifully showcases Marsalis’ unparalleled soprano playing. Read more »

Publication: Martinez News-Gazette
Author: Gordon R. Webb
Date: September 30, 2012

Fellow musicians, critics and the listening public alike must have thought jazz saxophonist Branford Marsalis had lost his mind back in 2009, when he hired 18-year-old Justin Faulkner to replace Jeff “Tain” Watts on drums. After all, Watts – regarded by many as the preeminent jazz drummer of his generation – had been in Marsalis’ quartet for nearly a quarter century and Faulkner was still in high school! But as we all know, there is a fine line between genius and insanity, and as it turns out, Marsalis’ decision was crazy-smart.

“It was a sure thing!” says Marsalis. “I heard him play a slow blues and that was it … I knew it. He understood how to groove, and that the key to swinging isn’t in the beats you play, it’s the space in-between the beats … and he had a great left hand. The kid was raw, but the potential was there and I knew we could teach him everything else.”

After a two year jazz ed incubation period, Marsalis ushered Faulkner and longtime collaborators Joey Calderazzo (piano, since 1999) and Eric Revis (bass, since 1997) into a Durham, N.C., church last October, to record tracks for a new album. The results were released in August 2012 on CD and vinyl, entitled “Four MFs Playin’ Tunes (Marsalis Music).” But please don’t let the off-hand title fool you into thinking the new record is some half-hearted jam session, because this is serious, modern jazz, spiritedly performed at an extraordinarily high level. The title comes from there being no overall concept or theme involved in the making of “Four MFs Playin‘ Tunes.”

“Our concept is just to play jazz,” says Marsalis in the overview promo video. “Learn 100 years of it … and play whatever.”

Every moment of “whatever” has a refreshingly loose, living-in-the-moment feel, but it’s a well-rehearsed spontaneity that comes from years of building trust on the bandstand. Read more »