Branford Marsalis Quartet featuring Dianne Reeves

Saxophone great and NEA Jazz Master Branford Marsalis and his superlative quartet are joined by fellow NEA Jazz Master and jazz’s greatest vocalist, Dianne Reeves, for a week devoted to the immortal 1963 Impulse! album John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman. 

As the eldest musical sibling in jazz’s most famous contemporary clan, the GRAMMY-winning Marsalis parlayed his formative experiences in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and his brother Wynton’s band into simultaneous careers as a performer, educator, composer, label owner, and bandleader with over 30 albums to his name. His working quartet with Joey Calderazzo, Eric Reevis, and Justin Faulkner capture the spirit of the classic Coltrane quartet. 

Recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in March of 1963, John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman was a sublime showcase for Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones, who gave remarkable depth and sensitivity to a selection of standards including Irving Berlin’s “They Say It’s Wonderful,” Guy Wood’s “My One and Only Love,” and the definitive version of Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life.” Bringing the songs to life was the distinctive, evocative baritone of crooner Johnny Hartman, who was the only vocalist Coltrane ever collaborated with. 

Interpreting the songs with her own singular gifts, Reeves is a five-time GRAMMY winner who is accurately called “The most admired jazz diva since the heyday of Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday” (NY Times). She is an artist who embodies the music’s enduring values of elegance, class, and improvisational poise, with an innate feel for swing.