Groove Transcriptions - Kendrick Scott, "The Lost and Found"

I'm back!  We had an absolute blast in Korea and China, and now I'm back State side through the holidays, which should afford me the time to finish up a number of projects I've got in the works.

On this trip, my pianist, singer, and partner in crime, Joy Ellis brought along a Gretchen Parlato album from 2011 called "The Lost and Found".  While I was previously familiar with Gretchen, I had yet to hear this album.  It quickly became the soundtrack of the trip.

Upon first listen, not knowing who was drumming, I guessed Gregory Hutchinson, or possibly Damion Reed.  Somewhat to my surprise it turned out to be Kendrick Scott.  My surprise was due to the amount of patience and control he displays on the record.  Kendrick is an absolute monster, but I've seen him in person and in videos before and in the live setting he tends to be much busier, and, dare I say, overplay.  But here with Gretchen he's a groove machine, while still having some opportunities to let the reins out and open up.

Although he's very much in control, Scott does remain busy, but in a tasteful way.  There are grooves on this record that many of us mere mortals would throw a backbeat on and be done with that Kendrick liberally spices with subtle inflection.  He also seems to have a way of taking a 4/4 groove and almost giving the impression that it is in an odd time signature.

Check out a few of the grooves:

E-mail if you'd like a PDF, and be sure to check out the record.

Dig This - The Bill Evans Trio on Jazz 625

As predicted, I haven’t had much chance to get any writing done while I’ve been here in Asia.  I have, however, got a few projects started that you should hopefully see in the coming weeks, one of which being a series of Larry Bunker transcriptions from this video.

I’ve been watching it a lot on my iPod while I’ve been away, and have found it really inspiring.  Among the many drummers that worked with Bill Evans (check out the cool timeline put together by a Dutch fellow named Rob Rijneke), I feel as though Larry Bunker is widely under-appreciated, probably due to all the attention and emphasis placed on Paul Motian and Joe LaBarbera.

I’ll be back home in a little over a week and will be getting back into posting on a regular basis, but until then dig on this video and wait patiently for the transcriptions and more information about Larry Bunker.