Influences

Who remembers the trumpeters Woody Shaw (1944-1989), Roy Hargrove (1969-2018), Wallace Roney (1960-2020) or Tom Harrell (*1946)? Each of these four had their own style, and yet they seem to have been forgotten. However, jazz musicians can get just as much inspiration from them as from recognized trumpet greats such as Louis Armstrong, Clifford Brown, Dizzy Gillespie, Chet Baker or Miles Davis. For Jared Hall, born in 1985, the first four are among the musicians who influenced him in the course of his training and career. Now he honors those four almost forgotten musicians on the album "Influences" with one piece each.

In "Song For Shaw", he approaches the gentle, feather-light, gliding playing of the once well-known trumpeter Woody Shaw. In the ballad "Dear Roy", on the other hand, he blows long melodic arcs with a firm, voluminous tone, as favored by Roy Hargrove in his hard bop records, while "One For Wallace" builds on Wallace Roney's surprising, often strongly accented playing and continues his intricate melodic line, which pleasantly contradicts listening expectations. In "Harrell", on the other hand, he takes up Tom Harrell's erratically constructed, sensitive solos that achieve long arcs of tension.

These homages and the five other tracks also reflect Jared Hall's roots in hard bop. Accordingly, pianist Tal Cohen, double bassist Michael Glynn and drummer John Bishop concentrate on a varied accompaniment that is well attuned to the bandleader and - in keeping with the band's history - does not intervene directly in Hall's gently gliding as well as energetic, powerful solos.