Mark Turner Quartet
Thursday, October 28, 2021
7:30 PM
The series concludes on Thursday, October 28, with the Mark Turner Quartet, featuring Turner on tenor saxophone, Joe Martin on bass, Jason Palmer on trumpet, and Jonathan Pinson on drums. Turner returns to the series having performed on the first set of concerts in 1996 with the TanaReid Quintet, then on subsequent dates with the collective trio Fly (with Larry Grenadier and Jeff Ballard), with Ethan Iverson, and with Gerald Clayton. In a career that spans more than two decades, Turner has emerged as a towering presence in the jazz community and is one of the most highly-regarded tenor saxophonists in jazz. The New York Times praised him simply as “Possibly jazz’s premier player… his stature in the jazz world keeps growing... a great jazz musician.” With a distinctive tone, singular improvisational skills and an innovative compositional approach, Turner has earned a far-reaching reputation as one of jazz’s most original musical forces. As fellow saxophonist Ravi Coltrane put it, “Mark Turner is one of the most important players that has come along in the last 20 years, easily the most influential.” For this Athenaeum appearance, Turner reunites the musicians from his forthcoming release on ECM Records, a follow-up to his acclaimed 2014 album, “Lathe of Heaven.” All Music wrote, “This is deeply meditative music that defies categorization while at the same time bringing to mind such disparate touchstones as '70s Kenny Wheeler, '60s Ornette Coleman, and the lyrical '50s West Coast cool of the Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan pianoless quartet… Turner strips back layers of jazz style and language to reveal a sound that is both familiar and utterly new.”
