Pianist/composer Eric Reed celebrates the music of Black and Brown composers on his deeply personal new album Black, Brown, and Blue featuring a brilliant new trio with bassist Luca Alemanno and drummer Reggie Quinerly. The album was released on March 10th, 2023 via Smoke Session Records.
Think of the songwriters whose work comprises the large list of jazz standards, and names like Gershwin, Rodgers, Berlin, and Porter immediately come to mind. On his new album, Black, Brown, and Blue, Eric Reed argues for a revision of that list to focus on Black and Brown composers, songwriters whose work originates within the jazz realm. Historically, many of the contributions and works of Black and Brown people have either been destroyed, devalued, or appropriated,” Reed writes in his liner notes.
Black, Brown, and Blue features music written by jazz masters like Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, McCoy Tyner, Wayne Shorter, Benny Golson, Horace Silver, Buddy Collette, and Buster Williams, along with jazz-conversant pop/R&B songwriters Stevie Wonder and Bill Withers.
“Where I am now in my life, I’m only concerned about conveying the most personal and heartfelt ideas through my music. Black, Brown, and Blue is the culmination of my life thus far.” What shines through on these performances is the deep well of emotion and feeling that Reed mines in his playing, his expression, and his ability to communicate on a profound level with his new trio.
For more than three decades, pianist Eric Reed has been one of the most influential and beloved jazz musicians. He has recorded close to 30 albums as a leader showcasing his virtuosic chops, intellectual clarity, unwavering will to swing, and ability to refract and coalesce a wide range of musical, spiritual, and personal influences into a single stream of consciousness.
