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The new album by the Robert Glasper Experiment is titled ArtScience.
For Glasper, whose reputation for straddling
genres has been growing since he burst
on the scene more than a decade ago, the explosion
has been a controlled one—his collaboration
with Hancock is only the latest manifestation,
if a particularly edifying one.
“It’s like a master class every day,” Glasper
said between bites of a burger at a hangout in
his neighborhood on the eve of a fall European
tour. “I’m like a little kid.”
That kind of enthusiasm has informed
every aspect of the collaboration, said Hancock,
who, at 76, is twice as old as Glasper. “His energy,
spirit and humor embrace everybody in the
room,” Hancock said. “I really sense the seeds
of genius in him.”
By all indications, those seeds are bearing
fruit.
Glasper first gained notice in jazz circles as
a thoughtful artist with a touch that, for
many, evoked the easy brilliance of Hancock’s
early work. That he fashioned fresh takes on
Hancock’s tunes strengthened the association.
His 2004 debut, Mood (Fresh Sound New
Talent), covered “Maiden Voyage.” Canvas, his
2005 Blue Note debut, included “Riot.” In My
Element, released in 2007, revisited “Maiden
Voyage.” And Double-Booked, released in 2009,
took flight with “Butterfly.”
Hancock had been aware of Glasper prior
to the collaboration, but he wasn’t deeply familiar
with the younger artist’s work. Hancock
checked out some YouTube videos of Glasper in
action and, upon getting together with him, was
duly impressed. “I found out he was a devotee of
my music,” Hancock said. “He had even recorded
some of my tunes, and put a new approach to
them.” Meeting Glasper’s wife and young son,
Riley, sealed the deal, and conversations began
about the pianists working together.
In the studio, Glasper has put forth a novel
approach, according to Hancock: “He has made
a style of repeating short, provocative phrases
and building on that. It could be a melody or
something that involves some harmony with
a melodic element to it that repeats over and
over and has enough space for other elements
to be added—building structures and textures
around what Robert started.”
Martin, who has known Glasper since high
school, spoke more personally about his friend:
“I admire the person he is, the man he is, the
father he is. He’s been warm and giving, even in
the darkest hours of my life.”
That combination of innovation and inspiration
has helped Glasper to earn the attention
of the wider musical community, not
least the Grammy powers-that-be. Working
in the early part of this decade with his electric
group, the Robert Glasper Experiment, his
tune “All Matter” (off Double-Booked) was a
Grammy nominee for Best Urban Alternative
Performance. Black Radio (2012) won for
Best R&B Album. And his treatment of Stevie
Wonder’s “Jesus Children Of America” (off
2013’s Black Radio 2) won in the category Best
Traditional R&B Performance.
Never one to rest on his laurels, Glasper
reverted to his acoustic trio with Covered, a
2015 collection that focused on interpretations
of contemporary tunes by the likes of
Radiohead, Bilal and Cyndi Lauper. A powerful
version of Kendrick Lamar’s “I’m Dying Of
Thirst” closed the album. (Glasper and Martin
both contributed to Lamar’s milestone album
To Pimp A Butterfly.)
Between Glasper’s acoustic and electric
bands, the vibe is different but the voice is not.
While the tones and textures of Covered suggest
jazz by anyone’s definition of the term,
the underlying sensibility is of a piece with any
electro-funk mash-up Glasper creates. In fact,
he said, audiences drawn to one sound or the
other often end up checking out his entire catalog.
With some smart marketing, they can be
encouraged to do so.
“People come to my shows and say, ‘I never
listened to jazz in my life, but because of
Covered I bought your whole discography,’” he
said. “When we first put out Black Radio, we
made every one of our trio albums $5.99. We
knew people would go back and look, so we
made it really cheap so they’d just buy it. It really
worked.”
On his latest album, ArtScience (Blue Note),
Glasper has returned to the Experiment, with
a twist. Having recruited a gaggle of guest performers
for the Black Radio series—from rappers
Snoop Dogg and Common to singers Norah
Jones and Jill Scott—he has pared down the cast
on ArtScience and amped up the participation of
his core group: Casey Benjamin on saxophone
(and many of the vocals), Derrick Hodge on bass
and Mark Colenburg on drums. Guitarist Mike
Severson figures in the mix as well.
The tracks were laid down over two weeks
in New Orleans, a location he chose for its relative
isolation. “Nobody in the band knew many
people in New Orleans,” Glasper explained.
“We literally just camped out and wrote all the
songs in the studio.
“Somebody would bring in a piece of a song
and I’d say, ‘Let’s add this.’ Someone else would
add lyrics. We’d run over it once or twice and
say, ‘Let’s record.’ The cool thing about this
record is that everybody produced.”
Colenburg echoed the sentiment: “The initial
spirit was to be a collective effort. The vibe
was loose. No one knew what this project was
going to be beforehand. Everybody got into a
space of creativity. It was just open.”
Colenburg noted Glasper’s generosity
throughout the two weeks. “This situation is
not your typical band situation. Even though
Robert is a Blue Note artist, it’s a friendship. It’s
more about having this platform, having something
to express, having something together.”
Befitting the process, the album’s 12 songs
—not counting interludes—range widely in
style and substance. The opener, “This Is Not
Fear,” is a smoking acoustic romp that skirts
the edges of the avant-garde. The closer is a version
of synth-pop band The Human League’s
1986 hit “Human,” which is faithfully rendered
up to a point, before dissolving into a swinging
postlude that functions as the album’s acoustic
bookend.
In between, a variety of moods are conjured—most
strikingly, perhaps, on the soaring,
multilayered “Find You.” “That might be
my favorite song on the whole album,” Glasper
said, adding that, while it started with an idea
by Hodge, it ended up as the first song for which
the group took a collective writing credit. “It
encompasses so much in one song.”
Set within its musical context, “Find You”
calls to mind the aspirational overtones of the
Hancock oeuvre of the 1970s, from the episodic
escalations of Thrust to the vocoder vocals of
Sunlight. The latter album, Glasper said, is the
one that, in 1999, turned him into a Hancock
adherent when rapper J Dilla played it for him.
Among the more poignant moments on the
album is a short spoken-word interlude in
which Riley, then 5, comments on police shootings
of unarmed civilians. Though Glasper said
that the commentary bears no special relation-
28 DOWNBEAT FEBRUARY 2017