Bio:
Russell Malone is one of the signature guitar players of his generation. The leader of ten albums since 1992, Malone is as well-known on the international circuit for helming a world-class quartet and trio as he is for his long-standing participation in Ron Carter’s Golden Striker Trio, and his recent consequential contribution to the musical production of the likes of Sonny Rollins and Dianne Reeves, who recruited Malone for his singular tone, refined listening skills, limitless chops, and efflorescent imagination.
In all these circumstances, Malone addresses the tradition on its own terms, refracting the vocabularies and syntax of such heroes as Charlie Christian, Chet Atkins, George Van Eps, Johnny Smith, Wes Montgomery, Grant Green, Kenny Burrell, Pat Martino, and George Benson into an argot entirely his own. A master of all tempos, a relentless swinger, he spins his stories — in idioms ranging from the urban and downhome blues, country, gospel, various corners of the American Songbook, and hardcore jazz—with a soulful, instantly recognizable instrumental voice, and seasons them with sophisticated harmonies that are never “too hip for the room.”
“T take pride on being open enough to play with anybody,” says Malone, citing encounters with such diverse artists as B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, Andy Williams, James “Blood” Ulmer, and Ornette Coleman. “I love to swing, but I don’t look down my nose at other styles of music, or other musicians. I'll play with anybody, if the music is good.”
Born in 1963 in Albany, Georgia, where he was raised, Malone received his first guitar— a green plastic four-string—at 4. He began playing in church at 6, and discovered jazz at 12, when he heard Benson perform on a PBS special with Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson, Red Norvo, Milt Hinton, and Jo Jones. In short order, he purchased Benson’s Cookbook and Benson Burner, and Montgomery’s Smokin’ at the Half Note and Boss Guitar. “Those four records set me on a path that I have not deviated from,” Malone says.
After high school, Malone left Albany for an extended engagement in Houston with organist Al Rylander, who had employed the talented youngster for almost a year in a local club. In 1985, he moved to Atlanta, where he built a reputation sidemanning with, among others, saxophonist-blues singer Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Little Anthony, Peabo Bryson, O.C. Smith and Freddy Cole, and leading units at Walter Mitty’s, a local club where touring musicians jammed after gigs. Two of them, Branford Marsalis and the legendary pianist John Hicks, encouraged Malone to come to New York City. He first visited the Apple in 1985, and began to network with generational peers, sitting in on various bandstands, jamming late nights at the Blue Note, and attending Barry Harris’ Jazz Cultural Theater.
From 1988 to 1990, Malone sete with Hammond B-3 icon Jimmy Smith, who “told me that he didn’t want me to play like my idols, gave me permission to speak with my own voice.” He garnered more visibility during a 1990-94 tenure with Harry Connick, who made it his practice to feature Malone’s singing and guitar playing at the start of his shows. In 1992, he signed with Connick’s label, Columbia, which released Russell Malone and Black Butterfly, on which Malone addressed the mix of genres—old-school and contemporary pop, original jazz, spirituals, and, of course, the blues—that continue to characterize his mature tonal personality.
During a 1994-98 stint with Diana Krall, he performed on three of Krall’s CDs, appeared in the Robert Altman film Kansas City, participated in Roy Hargrove’s Latin Grammy-winning Crisol band, and recorded Wholly Cats (Larry Willis, piano; Rodney Whitaker, bass; Yoron Israel, drums) for Japan’s Venus label. In 1998 he led the first of three recordings for Verve, including a personal favorite, Heartstrings, on which string arrangements by Johnny Mandel, Dori Caymmi, and Alan Broadbent and an all-star rhythm section—pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Christian McBride, and drummer Jeff Watts—enfold a succession of blue flame guitar solos.
Malone’s made five recordings with pianist Benny Green—three of them trios with McBride—between 1997 and 2004. All the aforementioned were close to bass legend Ray Brown, who first recorded with Malone in 2000 on Some of My Best Friends Are...Guitarists, and employed him in a crackling trio with Monty Alexander until his death in 2002, a few weeks after they made Brown’s final, eponymously titled recording. In 2003, Brown’s heir to the bass throne, Ron Carter, who had known Malone since both performed in Kansas City, recruited him for The Golden Striker, a bass-guitar-piano date with the late pianist Mulgrew Miller. Malone continues to play on Carter’s projects, and recently has spent consequential time in Dianne Reeves’ two-guitar unit with Romero Lubambo.
In 2004, Malone launched a still-ongoing relationship with MaxJazz with Playground, followed by Live At the Jazz Standard, Volumes 1 and 2, and the 2010 trio recital, Triple Play, with bassist David Wong and drummer Montez Coleman. Reviewing the latter, jazz journalist Doug Ramsey noted Malone’s “warmth, conversational phrasing and lack of hurry,” adding that, “in the absence of another chording instrument to collaborate or contend with, Malone is free to make harmonic choices without concern for clash or collision.”
“There was a period where I wanted validation, felt I needed to do certain things in order to get people’s approval,” Malone says. “I lacked the confidence to speak with the voice that was in me. But at some point, you have to accept who you are. No one will ever out-do me at being Russell Malone.” Malone’s latest recording is “All About Melody” on High Note Records.
Contact Information
Management/Booking:
Booking contact:
M.F. Productions
(912) 441-6072 [email protected]
Record label contact:
High Note Records
Barney Fields
(212) 873-2020
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
“Obviously, we are in the capable hands of a master. Absolutely fluid touch and beautiful integration between moving lines and harmonic cadences. The sound of the instrument is well- balanced throughout the entire register. The relaxed quality of everything that’s being played gives it such a warm feeling. To play that stuff is extremely hard. This is an absolute master, the best of the best.”
— Kurt Rosenwinkel, responding to Russell Malone’s solo performance of “Remind Me” on Playground [MaxJazz, 2004], in a Down Beat Blindfold Test.
Source: https://pro-jazz.com/videos/142-2018-ron-carter-trio-live-at-jazz-vienne-festival-hdtv-1080i.html Ron Carter - bass Russell L. Malone - guitar Donald...
Human creativity is everywhere. From Brazil it's all being connected in a manner allowing one to move from any creator to any other creator in just a few steps. Artificial Intelligence & algorithms not necessary. Real intelligence, yes.
THE MATRIX IS THE MOTHER SHIP (it carries people to culture; per above, it carries culture too)
THE MATRIX IS CULTURAL DIFFUSION ON A PLANETARY SCALE (Bahia is Ground Zero)
THE MATRIX IS THE INTEGRATED GLOBAL CREATIVE ECONOMY (matrixed economist, Dr. Darius Mans, presents the Africare Award to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — Brazil's current president — in 2012)
Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix. — Susan Rogers (personal recording engineer for Prince; recorded "Purple Rain", "Around the World in a Day", "Parade", and "Sign o' the Times"; now director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory)
Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched! — Julian Lloyd Webber (most highly renowned cellist in the United Kingdom; brother of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats...)
This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :))) — Clarice Assad (pianist, composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world)
This Matrix was built by an ex-royalty "rescuer" (Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley and many others) so that deep Brazilian culture, much of it otherwise impossible to find if one is not right there where it is made, might also (via an alternative to major media) be discoverable from all around the world. To do this it integrates this immensity into a system whereby ALL CULTURE EVERYWHERE — from small villages in Africa to Grammy-winning artists in Los Angeles — writers, filmmakers, painters... — can be found from anywhere on the planet.
The Matrix uncoils from the Recôncavo of Bahia, Brazil, final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history and from where some of the most physically and spiritually uplifting music ever made (samba and its precursor chula, per the Saturno Brothers above) evolved...
WHAT IS THE RECÔNCAVO? The peninsula upon which Salvador is situated is like the thumb of an open and grasping hand, what is normally thought of as the Recôncavo then being defined by the curved index finger. This way of definition developed when agricultural products were brought to Salvador by boat, sometimes making their way first down the Paraguaçu river after having been carried overland from the sertão (backlands) to Cachoeira, the river debouching into the Bay of Saints at Maragogipe. The city of Bahia (as it was usually called then) was crouched on the bay, comprised of a commercial district much smaller in area than today (landfill has increased it greatly), the area around the upper section of the elevator, and what is now called Pelourinho.
Much of the remainder of the peninsula was given to sugarcane plantations, and dotted within the Atlantic rainforest were countless quilombos (Afro-Brazilian villages founded during the age of slavery); both are attested to today in commonly used city names. The neighborhood of Garcia was once Fazenda Garcia (fazenda being a farm or plantation), and this denomination is still used today to distinguish one end of Garcia (fim-de-linha) from the other (the Campo Grande end). Neighborhoods Engenho Velho de Federação and Engenho Velho de Brotas are so called for the old mills (engenhos velhos) which pressed the caldo (juice, so to speak) from the cane so laboriously hacked out of the fields. The neighborhood of Cabula is named for an nkisi (deity) of candomblé angola (the first candomblé -- a West African religious belief system -- to arrive in Bahia)...whose rhythms comprise the basis for samba, meaning that the rhythms to which so many in the world inexpertly swayed as Stan Getz's saxophone soared and João and Astrud Gilberto sensuously intoned -- this paragon of suave Brazilian sophistication -- was born in the rough senzalas (slavequarters) of Bahia. Ironically enough, the barefoot senzala version was/is far more sophisticated than the sophisticated version.
But times have changed, and Cabula is now a crowded, non-descript middle-to-working class Salvador city neighborhood (plenty of candomblé around though), and Engenhos Velhos de Federação and Brotas are swarming working class neighborhoods (ditto the candomblé); the senzala samba, the samba chula and samba-de-roda have disappeared. A simplified version -- Bahian pagode -- is heard everywhere in Salvador, but the real-deal stuff has died out here in the big city. It remains, however, a potent force on the remainder of its native ground, the Recôncavo proper, where it is danced to upon pounded earth, under moonlight broken by banana, palm and mango leaves, lifting the souls of its participants almost like something religious, which it was, and gods aside, is.
By the same mathematics positioning some 8 billion human beings within some 6 or so steps of each other, people in the Matrix tend to within close, accessible steps of everybody else inside the Matrix.
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles — jungle and desert and dense urban centers — both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn.
Brazil absorbed over ten times the number of enslaved Africans taken to the United States of America, and is a repository of African deities (and their music) now largely forgotten in their lands of origin.
Brazil was a refuge (of sorts) for Sephardim fleeing an Inquisition which followed them across the Atlantic (that unofficial symbol of Brazil's national music — the pandeiro — the hand drum in the opening scene above — was almost certainly brought to Brazil by these people).
Across the parched savannas of the interior of Brazil's culturally fecund nordeste/northeast, where wizard Hermeto Pascoal was born in Lagoa da Canoa (Lagoon of the Canoe) and raised in Olho d'Águia (Eye of the Eagle), much of Brazil's aboriginal population was absorbed into a caboclo/quilombola culture punctuated by the Star of David.