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The last couple months of 2015 have been a great time for fans of current jazz. First Matthew Shipp and Dave Douglas come out with top notch avante-garde post bop selections, and now Christian Scott Atunde Adjuah hits us with his visionary future-fusion called “Stretch Music”. You can call this music ‘fusion’, but this isn’t your grandfather’s fusion. In Scott’s artistic vision, the old 70s based jam sessions are replaced with unique compositions and sophisticated harmonic movement. Each song is a gem of electro-acoustic orchestration backed by modern rhythms, and for those who miss the old gnarly distorted jazz-rock jams, Scott includes a couple of those too.
Scott pulls from a wide variety of musical material on here; “TWIN” is a mournful trumpet melody over a driving African rhythm, “The Corner” is avant-funk, “Of a New Cool” is an orchestrated lounge tune with drumnbass rhythms that goes into a post bop jam, and “The Last Chieftain” gets into free rhythms and a screaming trumpet solo. There are many more tracks where Scott more or less makes up some genres of his own, while every tune has a sound and texture that can only be described as ultra-modern.
Scott surrounds himself with a great cast of players on here, with special mention for the flute playing of Elena Pinderhughes, the sax work of Brandon Cook, and some guitar guest spots for Matthew Stevens. Christian’s main asset on here is his compositions, but his trumpet playing is also strong, and he is one of the few modern players who doesn’t aways recall Miles or Freddie Hubbard. It is hard to get a voice of your own on the trumpet anymore.