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Tom Harrell
"What Harrell [does] is spin out improvisational lines filled with instant melodies. Like a lyricist who illuminates phrases with subtle internal rhymes, Harrell's soloing captivates both the hearts and the minds of his listeners."
-The Los Angeles Times
"One of the top trumpeters in jazz for the past two decades and one of the music's most prolific and gifted composers."
-Joe Cooper, New York Observer
"There is no one in jazz today writing with more intelligence, depth and heart than Tom Harrell."
-Bill Milkowski, JazzTimes
A veteran jazz trumpeter, composer, arranger and bandleader, whose work Newsweek once described as "pure melodic genius," Harrell steadily garnered international acclaim over the forty years of his career. Earlier this year, he was also honored to receive his second SESAC Jazz Award for his 2007 release Light On, which reached #1 on jazz radio charts last fall.
A frequent favorite in Down Beat and Jazz Times magazines' Critics and Readers polls, Harrell is known for his mellifluous sound and is widely regarded as one of the most stylistically versatile improvisers and composers working today. Each album he has released as a band leader has found its way onto various critics’ "Top Ten" lists worldwide. Harrell’s Afro-Latin outing, The Art of Rhythm was named "Best Jazz Album of the Year" by Entertainment Weekly in 1998 while his big band album, Times Mirror, won a Grammy nomination in 2000. His quintet recording, Live at the Village Vanguard received numerous awards in Europe, and was followed by Wise Children, an album honored with the SESAC Jazz Award in the fall of 2004.
Harrell and his quintet tour extensively. Recent television broadcasts of the quintet include San Javier Jazz Festival 2006 in Spain; Viersen Jazz Festival 2006 in Germany; Red Sea Jazz Festival 2005 in Israel; Jazz a Liege 2005; Chivas Jazz Festival 2004, a concert televised on DirecTV in Brazil. The band also appeared in Harrell’s profiled feature on CBS’ 60 Minutes in 2003.
His latest CD release, Light On, is a celebration of Harrell’s music with his current quintet, which includes Wayne Escoffery (sax), Ugonna Okegwo (bass), Danny Grissett (piano) and Johnathan Blake (drums). In addition to the twenty-plus album releases and thousands of concerts worldwide as a leader, Harrell has performed and recorded with other artists including Horace Silver, Dizzie Gillespie, Bill Evans, Gerry Mulligan, Art Farmer, Charles McPherson, Phil Woods, Lee Konitz, Charlie Haden, Joe Lovano, Kathleen Battle and Jane Monheit.
A graduate of Stanford University with a degree in music composition, Harrell is also a prolific composer and arranger.
Carlos Santana, Cold Blood, Azteca, Hank Jones, Jim Hall, Kenny Barron, Joe Lovano, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Lincoln Center Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, Danish Radio Big Band, WDR Big Band, Brussels Jazz Orchestra, and the Metropole Orchestra are among the many who have recorded and/or performed his work. Some of Harrell’s arrangements can also be heard on Peanuts Television Specials.
For his own signature recordings, Harrell often enjoys writing and composing for expanded ensembles. Albums that showcase such works include Wise Children, a project in which he combines woodwinds, brass, horns, strings, guitars, percussion and the vocals of Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves, Jane Monheit and Claudia Acuna with his working quintet; Paradise and The Art of Rhythm, both of which feature chamber ensembles with strings; and his big band project, Time’s Mirror. In the late 1970’s he also arranged for a big band that he co-led with the legendary bassist Sam Jones.
In 2006 Harrell was awarded a Chamber Music America grant with which he composed new pieces for trumpet and piano. The following year Harrell was commissioned to write symphonic arrangements for the French Orchestre National de Lorraine for the live recording project of vocalist Elisabeth Kontomanou. For this project, which premiered on January 19, 2008, Harrell further demonstrates his métier by deftly fusing classical music with the jazz standards of Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington and Thelonius Monk.
Harrell recently recorded eight new originals with his quintet. The album is scheduled to be released in March of 2009.
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