The Messenger Legacy at Jazz Standard

Drummer Art Blakey (1919–1990) was a progenitor of Hard Bop – the blues–drenched, relentlessly swinging music that has dominated mainstream instrumental jazz since the 1950s. Pianist Horace Silver nominally led the first edition of the Jazz Messengers, but after his departure in 1956 Blakey took over the leader’s role and used the Jazz Messengers name for the remainder of his career. The school of Blakey boasts some of the top graduating alumni in the history of jazz. All of the musicians appearing on our stage this week are alumni of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers including drummer Ralph Peterson, Art’s friend and understudy who was the second drummer in the Messengers Big Band...

read more

Drummer Art Blakey (1919–1990) was a progenitor of Hard Bop – the blues–drenched, relentlessly swinging music that has dominated mainstream instrumental jazz since the 1950s. Pianist Horace Silver nominally led the first edition of the Jazz Messengers, but after his departure in 1956 Blakey took over the leader’s role and used the Jazz Messengers name for the remainder of his career. The school of Blakey boasts some of the top graduating alumni in the history of jazz. All of the musicians appearing on our stage this week are alumni of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers including drummer Ralph Peterson, Art’s friend and understudy who was the second drummer in the Messengers Big Band. “Hard, funky, and bluesy, the band emphasized the music's primal rhythmic and harmonic essence…At the time of his death in 1990, the Messengers aesthetic dominated jazz, and Blakey himself had arguably become the most influential jazz musician of the past 20 years.”

show less