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Tom Harrell

Praised by Newsweek for his pure melodic genius, Tom Harrell is widely recognized as one of the most creative and uncompromising jazz instrumentalists and composers of our time. Even with a discography of over 260 recordings and a career that spans more than four decades, Harrell has managed to stay fresh and current as he continues to actively record and tour around the world.

He is a frequent winner in Down Beat and Jazz Times magazines' Critics and Readers Polls and a Grammy nominee. Harrell is also a Trumpeter of the Year nominee for the 2012 Jazz Journalists Association Awards. His warm, burnished sound on the trumpet and the flugelhorn, and the unparalleled harmonic and rhythmic sophistication in his playing and writing, have earned Harrell his place as a jazz icon to aspiring musicians and devoted fans alike.

Following the success of his first four albums with the current members of his quintet - a remarkably cohesive unit that includes tenor saxophonist Wayne Escoffery, pianist Danny Grissett, drummer Johnathan Blake, and his bassist of 13 years, Ugonna Okegwo, Harrell’s latest quintet offering, NUMBER FIVE, was released in May 2012. The quintet's previous albums, THE TIME OF THE SUN (2011), ROMAN NIGHTS (2010), PRANA DANCE (2009) and LIGHT ON (2007), received wide critical acclaim and won SESAC awards four years in a row for topping the radio charts in the U.S. In contrast to his signature recordings during the RCA/BMG years (1996 - 2003) where much of his focus was on projects involving large ensembles, the latest albums on Highnote demonstrate Harrell's skills as a leader of a smaller unit that calls to mind the energy and rapport of Art Blakey’s and Horace Silver’s bands.

The sheer joy of playing Harrell's music with one another is evident from each member of the quintet. The writing on these recordings is no less of an achievement than his work for the orchestra or the big band. The trumpeter-composer deftly weaves complex harmonies together with daring rhythmic concepts and unforgettable melodies while utilizing the available colors to full effect. Harrell's music is at once intelligent, soulful, fresh and accessible.

Harrell divides his time between writing projects, live performances, and recordings, and actively tours with his quintet around the world. Recent television broadcasts of concerts include: San Javier Jazz Festival in Spain; Viersen Jazz Festival in Germany; Red Sea Jazz Festival in Israel; Jazz a Liege in Belgium; and Chivas Jazz Festival in Brazil. Harrell was featured as the Artist in Residence at the Barga Jazz Festival (August 2009) and Vicenza Jazz Festival (May 2009). At the latter festival he performed duo, quintet and big band concerts over several days. Harrell also performed music from his WISE CHILDREN and PARADISE albums with the Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra at Traumzeit Festival (July 2009) and with the Yakima Symphony Orchestra at the Seasons Music Festival (October 2010). In the spring of that year, Harrell reunited with the Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw as guest soloist and arranger for a tour in the Netherlands, after their successful collaboration at the Concertgebouw in July of 2009.

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15
Album Review

Vince Guaraldi: A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

Read "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" reviewed by James Aren


Just in time for Thanksgiving, the people at Lee Mendelson films are serving up a fresh take on some old favorites. The soundtrack to a A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving has been released for the first time, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the special. Vince Guaraldi's voice is the first sound on the album. “Okay, well, did ya get that last one? This is cue one," as it swings into “Charlie Brown Blues." It is a good introduction ...

2
Album Review

Wayne Escoffery: Like Minds

Read "Like Minds" reviewed by Dave Linn


Wayne Escoffery was born in London and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. He began playing the saxophone at the age of 11, later studying at the Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven and the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. In the late 1990s, Escoffery started gaining recognition on the jazz scene with his tenure in the Eric Reed Septet and later joining the Mingus Big Band. After completing his studies, Escoffery moved to New ...

6
Liner Notes

Oleg Kireyev and Keith Javors: The Meeting

Read "Oleg Kireyev and Keith Javors: The Meeting" reviewed by Howard Mandel


How far must a reeds virtuoso from Bashkiria--a town in the Ural Mountains, southeast of Moscow towards Mongolia--and a pianist-composer-educator from southern Illinois, now living in Philadelphia, have to go to get together? Not very, based on the music Oleg Kireyev and Keith Javors arrive at on The Meeting. Simply to a shared sense of joy in swinging rhythms, warm, rich harmonies and singable songs. In their second co-led album Kireyev and Javors offer more delightful proof that ...

16
Liner Notes

Tom Harrell: Number Five

Read "Tom Harrell: Number Five" reviewed by John Kelman


"If it ain't broke, don't fix it," they say, and since coming to HighNote in 2007, trumpeter Tom Harrell has lived by that old adage, utilizing the same quintet for its auspicious debut, Light On, and three subsequent recordings, culminating in 2011's outstanding Time of the Sun. Number Five continues Harrell's winning streak with the same line-up, but if each successive recording has reflected the ongoing growth of one of today's most compelling small groups--the chemistry deeper and the interaction ...

4
Interview

My Conversation with Tom Harrell

Read "My Conversation with Tom Harrell" reviewed by AAJ Staff


We rummaged through our extensive pre-database archive and discovered a May 1999 interview with Tom Harrell, who celebrated his 75th birthday this past week. We published two other interviews with Tom: November 2003 and May 2009. AAJ: Do you recall when you were first exposed to jazz? TH: Well, I was fortunate that my parents had a really great library of music, of all kinds of music, including jazz. I was exposed at a really young ...

6
Radio & Podcasts

Trumpet Master Tom Harrell: Mainstream Melodocist

Read "Trumpet Master Tom Harrell: Mainstream Melodocist" reviewed by Russell Perry


Tom Harrell has been an active musician for over 50 years. After stints with a wide range of prominent bands including those of Horace Silver, Lee Konitz and George Russell, he came to maturity with the Phil Woods Quintet from 1983-1989. For the past three decades he has released a series of discs on roughly an annual basis that are consistently well-received. In 2018 he was the Jazz Journalists Association Trumpeter of the Year. In this next hour of Jazz ...

3
Album Review

Benjamin Boone: The Poetry of Jazz

Read "The Poetry of Jazz" reviewed by Duncan Heining


Lenny Bruce might have skewered it with his skit, “Psychopathia Sexualis." Mike Myers' mildly misogynist poet might have parodied it in the movie I Married an Axe Murderer (1993). It has been dismissed as a late-fifties fad associated with the Beats. And, yet, the desire of poets and jazz musicians to combine their art forms has proven surprisingly durable. Sometimes, the practice is just plain embarrassing and made worse by the reality that those involved, like the man ...

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1

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Tom Harrell

Jazz Musician of the Day: Tom Harrell

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating Tom Harrell's birthday today!

Praised by Newsweek for his pure melodic genius, Tom Harrell is widely recognized as one of the most creative and uncompromising jazz instrumentalists and composers of our time. Even with a discography of over 260 recordings and a career that spans more than four decades, Harrell has managed to stay fresh and current as he continues to actively record and tour around the world. He is a frequent winner in Down ...

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Tom Harrell

Jazz Musician of the Day: Tom Harrell

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating Tom Harrell's birthday today!

Praised by Newsweek for his pure melodic genius, Tom Harrell is widely recognized as one of the most creative and uncompromising jazz instrumentalists and composers of our time. Even with a discography of over 260 recordings and a career that spans more than four decades, Harrell has managed to stay fresh and current as he continues to actively record and tour around the world. He is a frequent winner in Down ...

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Tom Harrell

Jazz Musician of the Day: Tom Harrell

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating Tom Harrell's birthday today!

Praised by Newsweek for his pure melodic genius, Tom Harrell is widely recognized as one of the most creative and uncompromising jazz instrumentalists and composers of our time. Even with a discography of over 260 recordings and a career that spans more than four decades, Harrell has managed to stay fresh and current as he continues to actively record and tour around the world. He is a frequent winner in Down ...

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Tom Harrell

Jazz Musician of the Day: Tom Harrell

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating Tom Harrell's birthday today!

Praised by Newsweek for his pure melodic genius, Tom Harrell is widely recognized as one of the most creative and uncompromising jazz instrumentalists and composers of our time. Even with a discography of over 260 recordings and a career that spans more than four decades, Harrell has managed to stay fresh and current as he continues to actively record and tour around the world. He is a frequent winner in Down ...

1

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Tom Harrell

Jazz Musician of the Day: Tom Harrell

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating Tom Harrell's birthday today!

Praised by Newsweek for his pure melodic genius, Tom Harrell is widely recognized as one of the most creative and uncompromising jazz instrumentalists and composers of our time. Even with a discography of over 260 recordings and a career that spans more than four decades, Harrell has managed to stay fresh and current as he continues to actively record and tour around the world... Read more.

Place our Musician of the ...

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Tom Harrell

Jazz Musician of the Day: Tom Harrell

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating Tom Harrell's birthday today!

Praised by Newsweek for his pure melodic genius, Tom Harrell is widely recognized as one of the most creative and uncompromising jazz instrumentalists and composers of our time. Even with a discography of over 260 recordings and a career that spans more than four decades, Harrell has managed to stay fresh and current as he continues to actively record and tour around the world... Read more.

Place our Musician of the ...

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Tom Harrell

Jazz Musician of the Day: Tom Harrell

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating Tom Harrell's birthday today!

Praised by Newsweek for his pure melodic genius, Tom Harrell is widely recognized as one of the most creative and uncompromising jazz instrumentalists and composers of our time. Even with a discography of over 260 recordings and a career that spans more than four decades, Harrell has managed to stay fresh and current as he continues to actively record and tour around the world... Read more.

Place our Musician of the ...

1

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Tom Harrell

Jazz Musician of the Day: Tom Harrell

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating Tom Harrell's birthday today!

Praised by Newsweek for his pure melodic genius, Tom Harrell is widely recognized as one of the most creative and uncompromising jazz instrumentalists and composers of our time. Even with a discography of over 260 recordings and a career that spans more than four decades, Harrell has managed to stay fresh and current as he continues to actively record and tour around the world... Read more.

Place our Musician of the ...

1

Recording

Monday Recommendation: Tom Harrell

Monday Recommendation: Tom Harrell

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey

Tom Harrell, First Impressions (High Note) The fascination of jazz musicians with French impressionist composers goes back at least as far as Bix Beiderbecke. Among his contemporary successors, Tom Harrell is Beiderbecke’s counterpart not only as a lyrical soloist but also as a musical thinker influenced by the impressionists’ extended harmonies, exotic scales and other devices. This album is rich in his achievement in both areas. His trumpet and flugelhorn work is among his most moving on record, the muted ...

1

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Tom Harrell

Jazz Musician of the Day: Tom Harrell

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating Tom Harrell's birthday today! Praised by Newsweek for his pure melodic genius, Tom Harrell is widely recognized as one of the most creative and uncompromising jazz instrumentalists and composers of our time. Even with a discography of over 260 recordings and a career that spans more than four decades, Harrell has managed to stay fresh and current as he continues to actively record and tour around the world... Read more. Place our Musician of the ...

"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 A brilliant trumpeter, flugelhornist and composer. —Whitney Balliett, The New Yorker

There is no one in jazz today writing with more intelligent, depth and heart than Tom Harrell. —Bill Milkowski, JazzTimes

The premier trumpeter of his generation. —David Hajdu, Entertainment Weekly

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Louis Armstrong
trumpet and vocals
Clark Terry
trumpet
Roy Eldridge
trumpet
Brian Swartz
trumpet
Rich Willey
trumpet
Mario Fragiacomo
flugelhorn
Arne Hiorth
flugelhorn
John DePaola
trumpet
Paul Tafoya
trumpet
Elliot Bild
trumpet
Jun Iida
trumpet
Tomi Nikku
trumpet
JM International
band / ensemble / orchestra

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Like Minds

Smoke Sessions Records
2023

buy

A Charlie Brown...

Lee Mendelson Film Productions, Inc.
2023

buy

Common Practice

ECM Records
2019

buy

Infinity

HighNote Records, Inc.
2019

buy

The Poetry of Jazz

Origin Records
2018

buy

Little Birdie

From: A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
By Tom Harrell

My Truth feat. Gregory Porter

From: Like Minds
By Tom Harrell

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