Will Calhoun - Celebrating Elvin Jones at Scullers Jazz Club

Although he's best known as the hard-driving, groove-oriented drummer for the pioneering rock group Living Colour, Will Calhoun has played in a staggering variety of styles and traditions over the course of his eclectic career. Straight-ahead jazz, fusion, traditional African percussion, funk, hip-hop, and of course hard rock -- Calhoun has explored them all, and he traces the roots of all of them to one man: legendary drummer Elvin Jones.

On his second album for Motéma Music, Celebrating Elvin Jones (due out August 19), Calhoun pays tribute to his earliest and most profound influence with a stellar band of musicians, all of whom were impacted by Jones through their personal growth as a musician or their past working with him directly: bassist Christian McBride, saxophonist Antoine Roney, pianist/keyboardist Carlos McKinney, and trumpeter Keyon Harrold. The great keyboardist Jan Hammer, a member of Jones' trio for On the Mountain (1975), joins the band for a reprise of that album's Gene Perla-penned track "Destiny;" and Senegalese percussionist Doudou N'Diaye Rose joins with a group of drummers for the traditional Japanese folk song "Doll of the Bride."...

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Although he's best known as the hard-driving, groove-oriented drummer for the pioneering rock group Living Colour, Will Calhoun has played in a staggering variety of styles and traditions over the course of his eclectic career. Straight-ahead jazz, fusion, traditional African percussion, funk, hip-hop, and of course hard rock -- Calhoun has explored them all, and he traces the roots of all of them to one man: legendary drummer Elvin Jones.

On his second album for Motéma Music, Celebrating Elvin Jones (due out August 19), Calhoun pays tribute to his earliest and most profound influence with a stellar band of musicians, all of whom were impacted by Jones through their personal growth as a musician or their past working with him directly: bassist Christian McBride, saxophonist Antoine Roney, pianist/keyboardist Carlos McKinney, and trumpeter Keyon Harrold. The great keyboardist Jan Hammer, a member of Jones' trio for On the Mountain (1975), joins the band for a reprise of that album's Gene Perla-penned track "Destiny;" and Senegalese percussionist Doudou N'Diaye Rose joins with a group of drummers for the traditional Japanese folk song "Doll of the Bride."

"Elvin connected my worlds," Calhoun says. "Although I saw him playing jazz, I felt rock and roll, I felt fusion, I felt African music. It sounds electric, it sounds acoustic, it sounds very African, it sounds very Latin, there are all these elements in there."

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