Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

The Modern, Mixed-Up Music Of Jazz Pianist Robert Glasper

Producer and jazz pianist in an image from his live at Capitol Studios album recording session. (Courtesy Blue Note)
Producer and jazz pianist in an image from his live at Capitol Studios album recording session. (Courtesy Blue Note)

This program originally broadcast on June 10, 2016.

Jazz pianist Robert Glasper remixes Miles Davis  with modern hip-hop, soul and R&B. He joins us.

Guest

Robert Glasper, Grammy Award-winning pianist and producer. His new album, “Everything’s Beautiful,” is re-imagined interpretations of the music of Miles Davis. Executive producer of the soundtrack to the 2015 Davis biopic, “Miles Ahead.” His 2005 major-label debut was “Canvas.”(@robertglasper)

From The Reading List

Rolling Stone: Robert Glasper on Remixing Miles Davis, How Jazz Invented ‘Swagger’ — “It’s very rare that you get very old jazz lovers and super-young hip-hop lovers at the same exact show, when you think about it. Not many artists can do that. Cause the older jazz audience is a very specific thing, you know what I mean? It’s so specific, and they want to hear what they want to hear.”

New York Times: What Would Miles Davis Do? Robert Glasper Has an Idea — “Davis’s trademark rasp appears all over ‘Everything’s Beautiful,’ more often than his horn. The opening track includes a set of instructions to his sidemen during sessions in the late ’60s and early ’70s. At one point Davis goads the drummer Joe Chambers to play “some kind of pulse that goes on all the time, that doesn’t sound like ‘ting-ta-ting’ — a disparaging nod to a swinging ride cymbal pattern — in favor of a loop that “doesn’t break, and it doesn’t sound corny.”

Philadelphia Tribune: Robert Glasper offers a different flavor of Miles Davis“With his death on Sept. 28, 1991, Miles left behind an extensive catalog of groundbreaking and timeless music. Similarly, pianist-producer Glasper has built a career out of a vibrant fusion of R&B, jazz and hip-hop as the leader of the acoustic Robert Glasper Trio and the electronic Robert Glasper Experiment. In each genre, the pianist has pushed the musical boundaries.”

Miles Davis, the jazz master who changed music multiple times, died 25 years ago, leaving us to wonder what he would be playing today.  Now, Grammy-award winning  jazz pianist and record producer Robert Gasper offers some captivating ideas. He scored the music on Don Cheadle’s new film – “Miles Ahead” – and has a new CD that bridges jazz, R&B and hip-hop – while channeling Davis’s Jazz spirt and swagger. This hour On Point, Robert Glasper reinterprets Miles Davis — Anthony Brooks

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.