No single musical style defines jazz in the ’90s, and that undeniable fact appears to have liberated several of the most talented young artists playing the music.
Consider trumpeter Roy Hargrove, whom some listeners have pegged as yet another of the young neo-traditionalists on the rise. That label, and most any other, does not really apply to Hargrove, whose music is far too free ranging to categorize. As he showed Tuesday night at the Jazz Showcase, where he is leading his quintet through Sunday, Hargrove dips into several idioms, including be-bop, hard bop, modal and even a touch of “free jazz” experimentation. Still in his 20s, Hargrove may be too young to have formed his own musical language, yet he’s clearly in the process of creating it from a wide spectrum of jazz influences.
For the listener, this unabashed mix of styles can be as exhilarating as it must be for Hargrove to play. At no point is one precisely sure which direction Hargrove and his colleagues will turn, and at times, even they seem a bit surprised by the result.
Nowhere was the sheer breadth of ideas greater than in the finale of Tuesday night’s opening set, a piece by pianist Marc Cary called “Gentle Wind.” The title must be ironic, for these winds were mostly turbulent. By juxtaposing harmonically static, modal passages with standard be-bop runs, hard-bop bursts of sound, and an array of fiercely chromatic sonic effects, Hargrove practically summed up three recent decades of jazz history. The excitement was in hearing him careen freely among these ideas, riding the particular musical inspiration of the moment.
Hargrove was aided in this by tenor saxophonist Ron Blake, who similarly veered between standard bop figures and hard-hitting sonic blasts. With pianist Cary, drummer Clarence Penn and bassist Chris Thomas keeping the pulse steady even as the front line sometimes veered away from it, this quintet affirmed that modern jazz can push into new territory even while evoking hints of the old.
Not everything in this show was Sturm und Drang, however, with Hargrove and his ensemble offering more traditional fare, as well. Hargrove’s muted trumpet work in the standard “I Wish I Knew,” for instance, represented a straightforward treatment of a ballad as one might hope to hear. Yet even here, the lack of vibrato in Hargrove’s tone and the leanness of his sound owed to the aesthetics of the ’90s.
Exactly where all this merging of jazz past and present will lead Hargrove remains to be heard, but, at the very least, listening to him mature over the coming years should prove fascinating.
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Roy Hargrove plays the Jazz Showcase in the Blackstone Hotel, 636 S. Michigan Ave., through Sunday; phone 312-427-4846.
