New Album: October 14th, 2022 | Owen Broder - Hodges: Front and Center, Vol. 1
“Bird was such a founding father and introduced the language that became the language of the saxophone. But Johnny Hodges has always been a big influence on my playing. I really enjoy his lyrical, melodic playing and the warm vocal quality of his approach to sound.”
Saxophonist Owen Broder pays tribute to iconic jazzman Johnny Hodges, delving deep into his work with Duke Ellington and beyond
Hodges: Front and Center, Vol. 1, due out October 14 via Outside In Music, bridges six decades of jazz history with a stunning quintet featuring trumpeter Riley Mulherkar, pianist Carmen Staaf, bassist Barry Stephenson and drummer Bryan Carter
" The combination of traditional folk tunes, Copland-like flourishes and superb musicianship result in a transcendent work of art—one that celebrates human imagination while evoking the natural beauty of windswept prairies.” – Bobby Reed, DownBeat (review of Heritage)
" [Owen Broder] employs a past-via-the-present compositional technique with ingenuity and skill, producing music of genuine warmth and majesty." – Brian Zimmerman, Jazziz
As influential as he’s been on the history of the jazz saxophone, Johnny Hodges is usually discussed wholly in light of his key role in the Duke Ellington Orchestra. On his second release as a leader, saxophonist Owen Broder shifts the spotlight to focus more intently on the legendary altoist. With Hodges: Front and Center, Vol. 1, Broder and his gifted quintet explore nine compositions associated with the Rabbit (the nickname that Hodges earned early in his career and the source of several conflicting stories), culling pieces both from the Ellington repertoire as well as from the saxophonist’s often overlooked catalogue of small group albums.
Due out October 14, 2022 via Outside In Music, Hodges: Front and Center is hardly an exercise in nostalgia. On his acclaimed 2018 debut, Heritage, Broder offered striking new interpretations of American roots music from Appalachian folk to early blues, spirituals to bluegrass. He takes a similar approach to Hodges’ music here; the interpretations are not radically altered, but Broder’s insightful arrangements honor the beauty and elegance of the originals while lending them a deeply felt modern vibrancy.
“My generation is really a product of all that Charlie Parker brought to this music,” Broder points out. “Bird was such a founding father and introduced the language that became the language of the saxophone. But Johnny Hodges has always been a big influence on my playing. I really enjoy his lyrical, melodic playing and the warm vocal quality of his approach to sound.”
Broder was introduced to Hodges’ playing while still a high school student in Jacksonville, Florida. Naturally that initial exposure came via Ellington’s music, with Hodges being one of the foundational voices that the bandleader sculpted his signature sound to fit. Only later did Broder begin to discover Hodges’ extensive small group discography, beginning with a pair of 1959 releases co-led by the two giants: Back to Back and Side By Side.
It was the 60th anniversary of those two landmark albums that instigated this project. Broder embarked on a short tour in the summer of 2019, assembling local bands in each city he visited to delve into the Hodges songbook. In the interim he recorded the video album Our Highway with Cowboys & Frenchmen, the eclectic ensemble that he co-leads with fellow saxophonist Ethan Helm. When it came time to record the Hodges project, Broder assembled a stellar group well versed in both modern jazz and the vintage styles that this album (and its follow-up second album, currently slated for the spring of 2023) investigates.
In addition to Broder on alto and baritone saxophones, the band features trumpeter Riley Mulherkar, a co-founder of the renowned brass quartet The Westerlies as well as a regular member of Ryan Truesdell’s Gil Evans Project, where he takes on the Miles Davis role; pianist Carmen Staaf, who serves as musical director and pianist for singer Dee Dee Bridgewater and co-leads the band Science Fair with drummer Allison Miller, a frequent collaborator; bassist Barry Stephenson, a member of Jon Batiste and Stay Human as well as the band of drummer/vocalist Jamison Ross, a high school classmate of Broder’s; and Bryan Carter, another high school friend whose drumming has been heard everywhere from Jazz at Lincoln Center to Sesame Street.
“Some of them are old friends and some of them are new friends,” Broder says. “But because of their musical backgrounds, they all felt like the obvious choices for this band.”
The album opens with Clarence and Spencer Williams’ “Royal Garden Blues,” from Back to Back, which immediately draws the listener in with its buoyant swing and robust excitement. Any fear that this is some backward-glancing museum piece drops away with Broder’s burnished, sinuous solo, followed by Mulherkar’s rambunctious turn on the muted trumpet. Quickly realizing that the two Ellington small group collaborations were almost exclusively made of blues tunes, Broder dug deeper to find material, leading to discoveries like the strolling “Viscount,” from 1957’s The Big Sound, or Gerry Mulligan’s piquant “18 Carrots for Rabbit,” which offers a bold showcase for Broder’s supple bari attack.
Ellington is of course represented here, via a rollicking rendition of the immortal “Take the A Train” that reserves the famous theme until the song’s closing moments. The piece’s sheer joy stands in brilliant contrast to Hodges’ achingly gorgeous “Ballade for the Very Sad and Very Tired Lotus Eaters,” with Broder’s breathy, strong yet vulnerable baritone playing revealing all the nuance and lyricism that he learned from Hodges over Carter’s delicate brushwork and Staaf’s gracefully elegiac mood-setting.
Bridging six decades of musical evolution with an exuberant spirit and a shrewdly modern perspective, Owen Broder and his standout quintet have crafted a welcome reminder of Johnny Hodges’ profound soul and lyrical genius. Front and Center, Vol. 1 is both a fitting tribute and a luminous expression of the timeless state-of-the-jazz art.
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