Robert Hurst & Black Current Jam at Blue LLama Jazz Club

With a return Blue Llama Club show (three 45-min sets) Detroit bassist Robert Hurst appears perpetually in a groove and clothed in distinct momentum. Spring is here and it’s time for an auspicious debut of his new Motor City quartet.

Hurst thrives as a dimensional personality (artist, soloist, composer, arranger, educator) channeling the power of music to make change. His stark value derives from an ability to craft a rave repertoire that remains unfixed from jazz’s most delicate songbook conventions. Accentuating humanity and the cultural specificity of jazz, he aspires to bring people together through his art in live settings. Thoughtful, creative, evocative, and intensely personal, he produces compositions and arrangements proudly steeped in the jazz tradition yet drawing liberally and often from the African Diaspora....

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With a return Blue Llama Club show (three 45-min sets) Detroit bassist Robert Hurst appears perpetually in a groove and clothed in distinct momentum. Spring is here and it’s time for an auspicious debut of his new Motor City quartet.

Hurst thrives as a dimensional personality (artist, soloist, composer, arranger, educator) channeling the power of music to make change. His stark value derives from an ability to craft a rave repertoire that remains unfixed from jazz’s most delicate songbook conventions. Accentuating humanity and the cultural specificity of jazz, he aspires to bring people together through his art in live settings. Thoughtful, creative, evocative, and intensely personal, he produces compositions and arrangements proudly steeped in the jazz tradition yet drawing liberally and often from the African Diaspora.

On his last recording "Black Current Jam" (Dot Time) from 2018, Hurst’s riveting tone executes ambitious concepts and bravura bass lines. Elsewhere, Afrocentric themes and bursts of urban street beat prevail. Arrangements resonate —with saxophonist Rafael Leafar, drummer Nate Winn, pianist Ian Finkelstein, and percussionist Pepe Espinosa — pushing melodic arcs across urban contemporary, bossa, funk, and eclectic jazz-rooted rhythms. Credit well-ordered assists from singers Brendan Asante and Jillian Hurst, the bassist’s daughter, who help unleash a potpourri of sounds.

Hurst's current calendar finds him busier than ever. In spring/fall 2022 he embarks on two legs of yet another world tour with pianist Diana Krall. Fall christens involvement with programming and a jazz residency at Detroit’s Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, funded by a National Endowment for the Arts grant. Only last year, Hurst’s buoyant bass lines anchored a David Holmes’ movie score for director Steven Soderbergh’s “No Sudden Move”, a film noir crime thriller set in 1954 Detroit.

Now in year seventeen Hurst excitably enlivens contemporary improvisation teaching as associate music professor at the University of Michigan (School of Music, Theatre and Dance), where his shared classroom knowledge features a ceiling unlimited.

Robert Hurst - bass, Rafael Leafar - woodwinds, Nate Winn drums, Sasha Kashperko -guitar

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