Word: roney
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...name for themselves are often like a teenager who's just got his driver's license. They love speed for its own sake, blowing fusillades of notes that show dazzling enthusiasm but no sense of judgment. Leading his own septet on his fine new album Misterios (Warner Bros.), Wallace Roney proves an exception to the rule. His amber tone and patient, considered phrasing echo the mature works of Miles Davis...
Misterios marks the coming of age of a musician who endured his share of lean times. A dozen years ago, Roney, then 22, sold nearly everything he owned -- "my books, my records, my jacket," he says -- to leave Boston for New % York City, the world's jazz oasis. But when he arrived, it was more like a desert. He couldn't afford the $500 to buy his own horn. "There weren't too many gigs coming my way," he remembers. To practice, he had to borrow an old instrument a friend was using to hold flowers. At night he slept...
After a year, Roney finally had some luck. He played at a tribute to Davis, the trumpet's reigning genius, and the honoree was in the wings that night. He was impressed. "He asked me what kind of trumpet I had," Roney recalls, "and I told him none. So he gave...
...composition to build continuity between sparsely connected phrases. At times, the result can be dynamic, as in Shorter's quoting of Monk's "Bemsha Swing" near the beginning of "So What;" in other places, Shorter's decisions seem arbitrary and his thinner, reedier sound falls short next to Roney's full bodied and equally intense lines...
...album ends with a live rendition of the Davis original "All Blues," which, like "So What," begins with Carter eloquently stating the theme before the other musicians fall in behind him. Roney here sounds like a dead ringer for Miles, and everything about this song is amazing. Roney's confidence, Shorter's finally effective and haunting mirror, and Carter, Hancock and Williams pushing and pushing on make it hard for the listener to feel anything but blessed that these five very talented musicians decided to pay tribute to a true source of inspiration...