Being The Point

Fate has apparently selected Ray Anderson as a guinea pig, totally according to the motto: How can someone stand all of that? A severe case of diabetes impeded his plans for the future when he was 20, and he suffered facial paralysis on one side of his face at the beginning of the 1980s, with a relapse in 2010. Then his wife passed away after a long bout of cancer. As if that were not enough, the trombonist fell ill with laryngeal cancer a short time later. However, all of these things in addition to several operations and radiation treatments could not break the man, who is 62 years old today. He repeatedly came back, fought successfully for his life and above all for his music. A resilient person par excellence who keeps bouncing back, who continues as ever to move through the winding paths of music business in 2015 with the same curiosity as always, taking on a number of projects untiringly and full of vitality and feeding his status as perhaps one of the most interesting, versatile jazz trombonists living today.. In the infinitely flexible spectrum of the virtuoso wind player from Chicago, free music, New Orleans, funk, new music, bebop, rap, big band, avant-garde and many others get a common denominator, which is in no way insignificant. "Music is like food for me," Anderson said with a piercing laugh. "It feeds me, and not just financially. Sometimes I just want to try something different, pasta instead of fish for once, then a good salad and perhaps a dessert on the next day. My goal is always to prepare the best fish, the most delicious pasta and the crispest salad." Precisely true to this motto and following the spectacular collective tasting of his very varied projects such as the Slickaphonics, BassDrumBone, Alligator Band, the trombone collective Slideride, Pocket Brass Band, Lapis Lazuli Band as well as the feasts for the ears with renowned co-musicians such as Mark Dresser and Marty Ehrlich, the trombonist has now prepared a new sound and style menu: Ray Anderson's Organic Quartet. It corresponds completely to an early gustatory impression. "In 1964, in other words when I was 12, I heard 'Back at the Chicken Shack' by Jimmy Smith for the first time. The sound of the Hammond organ electrified me so much that I had the urgent desire to play in such a band starting from that moment. However, it wasn't until 1998 that I founded the Lapis Lazuli Band with Amina Claudine Meyers on the organ." Another 17 years later, Anderson believes it is now time to put the instrument he so admires completely in the center of a band. Authenticity is richly provided. No one less than Gary Versace plays the organ, the rising star per se on the 91 synchronously driven gearwheels picked up electromagnetically on the Laurens Hammond, who has played alongside of John Scofield, John Abercrombie, Al Foster, Regina Carter, Maria Schneider, Madeleine Peyroux and Matt Wilson. Steve Salerno (Jaco Pastorius, Bennie Wallace, Time Berne, Peter Erskine and Kenny Wheeler), a guitarist with a great reputation, provided the icing on the cake for the classic Hammond sound. Even the dominant father figure Jimmy Smith hangs over the Organic Quartet in the person of his nephew Tommy Campbell on drums. Ray Anderson has long been friends with Campbell, who already played the drums for Dizzy Gillespie when he was a young man. This resulted in extremely fruitful collaborations in the Lapis Lazuli Band and the Alligator Band. "Being The Point" reveals itself as a paintbox full of sounds, as a homogeneously conceived relationship between four musicians, in which the organ represents the perfect vehicle for the late realization of Ray Anderson's dreams as a young man. It is a sign of life on top of that from a musician, without whom jazz in the 21st century would certainly be a lot poorer.