MUSIC NEWS - After 2008's worldwide reunion tour with Return To Forever and then separate trio tours in 2009 with Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke and pianist Hiromi with Clarke, Lenny White worked up the steam to put out his own recording, his first as a leader in ten years. And now, we get word that on Anomaly, (out May 18, 2010 via Abstract Logix) the pioneering jazz-rock drummer returns to his roots that characterized the early 70s fusion movement.
"We need to restart a revolution so that we can take back the music and stop the fluff," says White. "I'm hoping that this new album is a representation of that ideal."
With a crew of guitar killers in Jimmy Herring (Widespread Panic), Nick Moroch (a former member of White's Astral Pirates), David Gilmore, Tom Guarna and David Bendeth, keyboardists George Colligan, Bernard Wright, Donald Blackman (another Astral Pirate ) and Vince Evans and bassists Victor Bailey, Richie Goods, Charles Fambrough and his RTF bandmate Stanley Clarke, White unleashes with Zeppelinesque fury on Anomaly, his tenth recording as a bandleader.
Mostly self-taught on drums, native New Yorker White stepped into the jazz world in 1968 with alto saxophonist Jackie McLean. A year later he participated in Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, regarded by most as the album that birthed the fusion movement. He subsequently recorded with a Who's Who in Jazz, including trumpeters Freddie Hubbard and Woody Shaw, tenor saxophonists Joe Henderson, Gato Barbieri and Stan Getz and renowned composer-bandleader Gil Evans, among others. As a member of Return To Forever (1973 thru 1976) White gained a solid reputation as one of the top fusion drummers of the day. "I'm basically a jazz guy, and that's what I grew up playing," he said. "But when this new thing happened with jazz-rock through Bitches Brew and bands like Tony Williams Lifetime and Return To Forever, I found myself on the ground floor of a movement. And this musical movement co-existed with other forms of music that came in during the latter part of the 20th century."
"I was fortunate when I started to make music," he continued. "I made music at the same time that Igor Stravinksy was making music, at the same time that Jimi Hendrix and James Brown were making music, at the same time that Duke Ellington and Miles Davis and John Coltrane were making music. Led Zeppelin co-existed at the same time that Return To Forever did. I listened to all that music and was influenced by all of it. So now when I put together an eclectic project I sometimes hear people say, "Oh man, what is he trying to do" "But the truth is, I'm not trying to do anything. I'm just representing the music that I came up listening to."
Mostly self-taught on drums, native New Yorker White stepped into the jazz world in 1968 with alto saxophonist Jackie McLean. A year later he participated in Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, regarded by most as the album that birthed the fusion movement. He subsequently recorded with a Who's Who in Jazz, including trumpeters Freddie Hubbard and Woody Shaw, tenor saxophonists Joe Henderson, Gato Barbieri and Stan Getz and renowned composer-bandleader Gil Evans, among others. As a member of Return To Forever (1973 thru 1976) White gained a solid reputation as one of the top fusion drummers of the day. "I'm basically a jazz guy, and that's what I grew up playing," he said. "But when this new thing happened with jazz-rock through Bitches Brew and bands like Tony Williams Lifetime and Return To Forever, I found myself on the ground floor of a movement. And this musical movement co-existed with other forms of music that came in during the latter part of the 20th century."
"I was fortunate when I started to make music," he continued. "I made music at the same time that Igor Stravinksy was making music, at the same time that Jimi Hendrix and James Brown were making music, at the same time that Duke Ellington and Miles Davis and John Coltrane were making music. Led Zeppelin co-existed at the same time that Return To Forever did. I listened to all that music and was influenced by all of it. So now when I put together an eclectic project I sometimes hear people say, "Oh man, what is he trying to do" "But the truth is, I'm not trying to do anything. I'm just representing the music that I came up listening to."
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