Deeply introspective, often starkly expressed and sometimes beautifully austere, Ran Blake possesses one of the truly personal stylistic voices of modern jazz. It’s is a piano music that is unquestionably of the idiom. Yet it defies the easy linear histories that simplify jazz as a succession of heroic musical innovations, and that position artists on a chronology of what is supposedly avant-garde.
Much of Blake’s unique musical world is constructed from a combination of clear yet seamless inspirations. His deft ear and adroit touch that dovetail blues tonalities and atonalism are likely born from the marriage of early influences such as Bartok, Debussy, Stravinsky, Monk and Ellington. But other influences may be more surprising. Important to Blake is his love of singers like Mahalia Jackson, Al Green and Ray Charles. Far from mere stylistic influences, they are inspirations in the deepest sense, and subjects of study.
Deeply introspective, often starkly expressed and sometimes beautifully austere, Ran Blake possesses one of the truly personal stylistic voices of modern jazz. It’s is a piano music that is unquestionably of the idiom. Yet it defies the easy linear histories that simplify jazz as a succession of heroic musical innovations, and that position artists on a chronology of what is supposedly avant-garde.
Much of Blake’s unique musical world is constructed from a combination of clear yet seamless inspirations. His deft ear and adroit touch that dovetail blues tonalities and atonalism are likely born from the marriage of early influences such as Bartok, Debussy, Stravinsky, Monk and Ellington. But other influences may be more surprising. Important to Blake is his love of singers like Mahalia Jackson, Al Green and Ray Charles. Far from mere stylistic influences, they are inspirations in the deepest sense, and subjects of study.
Deeply introspective, often starkly expressed and sometimes beautifully austere, Ran Blake possesses one of the truly personal stylistic voices of modern jazz. It’s is a piano music that is unquestionably of the idiom. Yet it defies the easy linear histories that simplify jazz as a succession of heroic musical innovations, and that position artists on a chronology of what is supposedly avant-garde.
Much of Blake’s unique musical world is constructed from a combination of clear yet seamless inspirations. His deft ear and adroit touch that dovetail blues tonalities and atonalism are likely born from the marriage of early influences such as Bartok, Debussy, Stravinsky, Monk and Ellington. But other influences may be more surprising. Important to Blake is his love of singers like Mahalia Jackson, Al Green and Ray Charles. Far from mere stylistic influences, they are inspirations in the deepest sense, and subjects of study.