Spectrum Road To Pay Tribute To Lifetime At Playboy Jazz Festival
Spectrum Road will explore the music of Tony Williams' Lifetime at the Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl.
In an age when Miles Davis still roams the upper half of the jazz charts on iTunes, news of a new band paying tribute to a now-deceased master may not be that surprising. But when Spectrum Road takes the stage to explore the music of Tony Williams' Lifetime while headlining Day 2 of this weekend's Playboy Jazz Festival, listeners would be wise to expect a bit more than the standard repertoire of familiar tunes, familiarly played.
“It's hard core," warns Cindy Blackman Santana, a drummer who is stepping into sizable shoes with Spectrum Road. The all-star quartet is dedicated to revisiting Williams' Lifetime, which forged the sound of fusion in the early 1970s. “It's not going to appeal to everyone," she adds.
“You have to be ready to do some sweating when you're going to play that music. You can't be ready to play 'Tea for Two' and then play Tony's music — that doesn't work," she says.
That the music of Tony Williams' Lifetime comes with a warning label befits a band that debuted with a double-album called “Emergency!" (exclamation mark theirs). Released in 1969, the record marked a departure for the drummer, who in addition to rambunctiously holding down the shape-shifting rhythms of Davis' “Second Great Quintet" also spent the '60s establishing the avant-garde sound of post-bop in landmark recordings such as Eric Dolphy's “Out to Lunch" and Andrew Hill's “Point of Departure," in addition to his impressive 1964 debut as a bandleader, “Life Time."
