Jazz Articles about Larry Willis

Roy Hargrove: Bern

by Jack Kenny
April 23, 2026

Roy Hargrove was a unifying figure in jazz. He could move fluidly between straight-ahead bebop, hard bop, ballads, hip-hop, Afro-Cuban rhythms, and neo-soul without ever seeming to compromise his musical identity. This album, Bern, issued for the first time as a posthumous release, is a spectacular marker of a band playing at the highest level. A good band will always produce acceptable music; a great band will sometimes surpass even itself. One of the deepest pleasures in jazz ...

Roy Hargrove: Bern

by Pierre Giroux
April 18, 2026

The appearance of Bern, a previously unreleased recording from May 4, 2000, at the International Jazzfestival in Bern, Switzerland, is the kind of archival find that reminds listeners how electrifying Roy Hargrove could be live. Released by Time Traveler Recordings on LP for Record Store Day, with CD and digital download versions to follow later. This set captures the late trumpeter in a moment of confident maturity, blending respect for tradition with the restless creativity that defined his career.

Roy Hargrove's Crisol: Grande-Terre

by Chris May
October 21, 2024

Increasingly and with growing momentum, right up until he died at the young age of 55 in 2018, Roy Hargrove was a standard bearer for a new kind of African American jazz. The recipe embraced a variety of styles--jazz, Afro-Cuban music, funk, hip hop and soul--and it influenced a generation of musicians in jazz and beyond. But Hargrove never abandoned jazz, the foundation stone of his style. Instead he regarded other genres as part of a rainbow ...

Larry Willis: I Fall in Love Too Easily

by Jack Bowers
July 20, 2020

I Fall in Love Too Easily is subtitled “The Final Session at Rudy Van Gelder's," as it is not only descriptively but literally the last recording session by veteran pianist Larry Willis, who died at age seventy-six in September 2019, one year after the album was completed at the renowned Van Gelder studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. The occasion also represented a homecoming of sorts for Willis who launched his six-decades-long career at that same studio in 1965, cutting ...

Larry Willis + Tomeka Reid, Ghost Horse, Matana Roberts & Other New Releases

by Ludovico Granvassu
November 5, 2019

This week we remember pianist Larry Willis (1942—2019) who passed away in September, followed by the perusal of a pile of exciting new releases and re-relases building jazz bridges between North America and Europe, featuring Midnight Lilacs (i.e. Chris Speed, Marc Ribot, Danilo Gallo and Zeno De Rossi), Ethan Iverson Quartet with Tom Harrell, Simone Graziano, Tomeka Reid, Ghost Horse, Matana Roberts, Alban Darche and more. Happy listening! Ben Allison “Mondo Jazz Theme (feat. ...

Larry Willis: Reaching and Teaching

by Russ Musto
May 1, 2010

In a career spanning five decades, Larry Willis has amassed one the most impressive resumes in jazz, including tenures with Jackie McLean, Hugh Masekela, Joe Henderson, Woody Shaw, Stan Getz, Carla Bley, Roy Hargrove, Jimmy Cobb's So What Sextet and Jerry Gonzalez and the Fort Apache Band, testifying to the high esteem in which he is held by his peers. Yet despite a substantial discography including scores of sideman appearances and over twenty dates as a leader, the gifted pianist/composer ...

Larry Willis: The Offering, Excursions & Expose

by Francis Lo Kee
January 10, 2009

Larry Willis The Offering HighNote 2008 Paul Murphy/Larry Willis Excursions Wicked Chops 2008 Paul Murphy/Larry Willis Expose Murphy 2008

Pianist Larry Willis leads a full, interesting musical life. From these two projects that span three CDs we hear Willis the rock solid post-bop ...