ROY HARGROVE'S CRISOL / CAPE MAY CONVENTION HALL
The Story
The late Texas-born trumpeter shot to fame like a meteor streaking across the night sky, and then he was gone. From his aptly-named debut in 1990 for the RCA/Novus label, Diamond in the Rough, to a string of acclaimed albums for Verve, including 1994’s With the Tenors of Our Time to 2002’s Directions in Music: Live at Massey Hall (with Herbie Hancock and Michael Brecker) to a series of successful and highly influential albums through the early 2000s with his 10-piece R&B flavored RH Factor band, Hargrove made a profound impact on the international jazz scene. Hargrove died in November 2018 at the age of 49 of cardiac arrest brought on by a kidney disease. In 2022, as a tribute to the trumpeter and his lasting legacy, the Roy Hargrove Big Band was launched, featuring original band members and other musicians who supported Hargrove in his various ensembles.
In this special appearance at the Exit Zero Jazz Festival, core members of Hargrove’s original Crisol sextet — drummer Willie Jones III, bassist Gerald Cannon, trombonist Frank Lacy — will join with saxophonists Jacques Schwarz-Bart and Sherman Irby along with rising stars Camerahn Alforque on trumpet and Tyler Bullock on piano and the powerhouse percussion tandem of Tony Cintron and Yusnier Sanchez, to perform material from the trumpeter’s Grammy-winning 1997 album Havana and the 1998 recording, Grande-Terre, which wasn’t released by Verve until 2024.
The Sound
A seamless blend of classic hard bop, Afro-Cuban rhythms and Cuban piano guajeos, Grande-Terre and Havana, in some ways, represents an extension of Dizzy Gillespie’s experiments with Chano Pozo in blending bebop and Afro-Cuban in the 1940s. And with percolating tunes like “Rumba Roy,” “Kamala’s Dance,” “Lake Danse,” “Afreeka” and the exhilarating 12/8 number “Priorities,” this modern day incarnation of Roy Hargrove’s Crisol reminds us of Dizzy’s credo: that jazz can be full of improvisational daring while also drawing audiences to the dance floor.
