Five of the Best Young Jazz Trumpets

While this blog focuses on the music of established or deceased artists, we occasionally take a look at the younger musicians who constantly revitalize jazz and keep the music and the legacy alive. This post looks at five of the best young jazz trumpeters on the scene today.

Maurice Brown won first place in the National Miles Davis Trumpet Competition in 2001 at the age of 20 and has been mentored by Wynton Marsalis and Ramsey Lewis. He describes himself as "Louis Armstrong and his trumpet uploaded for the 21st century to a Hip-Hop beat." JazzTimes critic Forrest Dylan Bryant said that Brown "makes every note count" and described "his meaty tone [as packing] a wallop once he gets heated up, jabbing repeatedly at a single note or phrase, then hopscotching forward." He is currently touring with the Tedeschi Trucks Band, with whom he won the the 2012 Grammy for Best Blues Album.

• Hip to Bop was Brown's first album as a bandleader and mixes elements of hard bop with the rhythms of both hip hop and R&B. It features eight of his original compositions, including the soulful "It's a New Day" and the hard-swinging "Conceptions." (Purchase the album from Amazon.com.)
• The Cycle of Love was described by JazzTimes critic Forrest Dylan Bryant as "a solid sophomore outing" and a "crossover disc in the best sense of the word." Through songs like the aptly-named "Merry Go Round" and the funky "Misunderstood," this album reflects Brown's journey from New Orleans to Brooklyn, where he settled after Hurricane Katrina destroyed his home. (Purchase the album from Amazon.com.)

Philip Dizack combines a deep emotional intensity with a unique tone, and according to an interview at the blog Notes on the Road, tries "to go a little further emotionally each time [he plays] to really get the rawness of the human spirit in [his] playing. In 2007, Downbeat Magazine named Dizack as one of "25 Trumpet Players for the Future."

• Dizack's atmospheric second album, End of an Era, was called "a statement of maturity that is born out of personal life experiences" by critic Mark F. Turner at All About Jazz. The album includes an unforgettable version of Coldplay's "What If" as well as original tunes, like "Grow," which features particularly intense interplay among the musicians. (Purchase the album from Amazon.com.)
• Single Soul is Dizack's most recent album, released in 2013. It combines original pieces, like the gently grooving "Jacob and the Angel," with standards, including an elegant a capella version of Duke Ellington's classic, "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good." (Purchase the album from Amazon.com.)

Kirk Knuffke is one of four nominees for Trumpeter of the Year in the Jazz Journalists Association's 2014 Jazz Awards. He plays with a searching bravado and an especially energetic range. Critic John Litweiler described Knuffke's playing this way: "He’ll develop a distinctly etched line that suddenly, before you know it, veers off in a different direction, or he’ll just as suddenly start a train of thought in a faster momentum. His phrases are short, his themes and his improvisations rarely resolve."

• Chorale is Knuffke's latest album and his fourth as a leader and includes eight original compositions and one cover. The songs range from the rhythmically nuanced "Wingy" to the spirited "Good Good." (Purchase the album from Amazon.com.)
• Orange Was the Color is a tribute to bass legend Charles Mingus and features Knuffke with pianist Jesse Stacken. Several of the songs, like "East Coasting" and "Celia," are lesser-known pieces by Mingus, but the album also includes the more familiar "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," which Knuffke and Stacken play at a slow, moving tempo. (Purchase the album from Amazon.com.)

Christian Scott, aka Christian aTunde Adjuah, was named the top Rising Star in Trumpet in Downbeat Magazine's 2013 Critics Poll. A product of the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts and the Berklee School of Music in Boston, Scott combines a wide range of styles, including hip-hop, funk, and African rhythms. As Scott himself says, "I like indie rock music. I like neo-soul music. I like polka. All that influences what I do. But the minute you say, 'This is x' ... you're putting something in a box.'"

• Yesterday You Said Tomorrow was described by critic Chris May as "a gym-ripped amalgam of edgy jazz, hip hop and rock rhythms, off-kilter ostinatos, intimate rhapsodies and full-on passions, all welded together by the New Orleans-born player's alternately caressing and searing horn." The album opens with the dark "K.K.P.D." and incudes the lovely ballad, "Isadora." (Purchase the album from Amazon.com.)
• Scott's debut album for Concord Records, Rewind That, received a Grammy nomination in the Best Contemporary Jazz Album category. All About Jazz said that the opening track, "Rewind That," "simultaneously whispers and screams, riffing off a distorted guitar right into a hard polyrhythmic funk groove, Scott blowing an oblique, incredibly fat-toned melody line on top." (Purchase the album from Amazon.com.)

The Canadian Bria Skonberg plays the trumpet, sings, and composes, so well that Wall Street Journal critic Will Friedwald said that she "looks like a Scandinavian angel (or Thor’s girlfriend), plays trumpet like a red hot devil, and sings like a dream." Wynton Marsalis called her "the full package," and her versatility is also reflected in her style, which fuses classic jazz with more contemporary sounds.

• Into Your Own is Skonberg's latest album and combines her strapping voice with her unrestrained trumpet playing on tune such as the light ballad "Break My Fall" and the funky "Go Tell It." (Purchase the album from Amazon.com.)
• So Is the Day features more of Skonberg's versatile — sometimes snarling, sometimes lyrical — trumpet and includes songs that range from the Dixieland sound of "Chilliwack Cheer" to the swinging "I Wish I Hadn't Forgotten," which features a duo with guitarist John Pizzarelli. (Purchase the album from Amazon.com.)

Robert
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