review

Publication: JazzTimes
Author: Christopher Loudon
Date: July 25, 2016

How did one of the best and most important jazz bands around—saxophonist Branford Marsalis, pianist Joey Calderazzo, bassist Eric Revis and drummer Justin Faulkner—come to unite with one of the best and most important jazz vocalists? The idea ignited when Marsalis and Kurt Elling met during the 2014 Monk competition. Two years on, immediately prior to a New Orleans recording session, Elling and the quartet shared a weekend engagement at Snug Harbor, finding their collective groove and testing various songs. That Elling becomes fully one with the group—this is truly a quintet album—is evident from the opening moments of “There’s a Boat Dat’s Leavin’ Soon for New York,” its feverish pace finally slowing as he adlibs 90 seconds of wolfish patter oozing with carnal desire.
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Publication: Buffalo.com
Author: Jeff Simon
Date: June 7, 2015

Branford Marsalis Quartet, “A Love Supreme: Live in Amsterdam” (Okeh/Marsalis Music, disc plus DVD). A celebration of jazz history that is, itself, a remarkable bit of jazz history. John Coltrane’s classic record “A Love Supreme” was issued in February 1965. In the 50 years since its birth, few, if any, have been the musicians to treat Coltrane’s record as anything other than a great jazz monument – never to be touched and always to be revered. Here is that amazing rarity in celebration of “A Love Supreme’s” 50th anniversary year – a spectacular current jazz saxophonist putting his phenomenal quartet to work on Coltrane’s composition. Marsalis, then, is using all of Coltrane’s themes, tempos and rhythms but his incredible quartet is doing it all in their own way, from note to note. This, then, is one of the more phenomenal things that ever happens in jazz: one master player performing the most passionate tribute he can to a greater one by using every bit of his own majestic talent. 

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