Acclaimed Trumpeter, Roy Hargrove, Headlines MusicFest

Closing out 3 days of music will be acclaimed trumpeter, composer and bandleader, Roy Hargrove taking the MusicFest stage at 5 pm, Saturday, August 29th on the last of three days of free, outdoor music in City Hall Park.

Hargrove, whose spectacular hard bop trumpet has led quintets, has realized a lifelong dream with the August 25th release of Emergence, his first big band album.

The seeds of Emergence were planted in 1995, when Hargrove first formed a big band for a New York jazz festival. His big band concept grew as he led the evolving group through a series of regular gigs at the Jazz Gallery, a not-for-profit performance space in lower Manhattan - which proved invaluable for both Hargrove and the musicians who participated. Hargrove explains. “I go around to jam sessions a lot, sit in with cats, and I think that the new generation doesn’t have a lot of experience playing in sections and playing in big bands. So this provides younger guys with a sense of camaraderie that is not really evident anymore in jazz.”

Since his own emergence in the late ’80s, Hargrove has proved to be an adventurous and wide-ranging artist, proudly immersed in the jazz tradition and yet continually striking out for new terrain. Among his groups include the straight-ahead, hard-bop Roy Hargrove Quintet and Crisol, an Afro-Cuban ensemble that won a Grammy in 1998 for Best Latin Jazz Performance with its album Habana.

Hargrove’s big band, which cites the large bands of Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Maynard Ferguson, and Gerald Wilson as key influences, has already been showcased at the Hollywood Bowl and SummerStage in New York’s Central Park.

See the complete Music Fest 2009 Schedule.

Tweet This Post