In 2001 bassist Robert Hurst assembled some of his best musical friends for a recording session that is no longer hiding on a hard drive.
BoB – A Palindrome by Detroiter Robert Hurst is now in print on Hurst’s private label – Bebob Records. 13 years is a long time. The recording could run the risk of sounding dated; of being recorded with outmoded techniques or any number of things that would tip you off to the age of the session. However, if you were to hear the music with no additional information, you would swear it was recorded in the past six months. The tunes are that current and contemporary.
Robert Hurst can hear the energy of today and tomorrow and work those attitudes in to traditional jazz instrumentation. The instrumentation on BoB – A Palindrome includes two of Robert’s early Detroit mentors: trumpeter Marcus Belgrave and clarinetist/saxophonist Bennie Maupin as well as saxophonist Branford Marsalis, pianist Robert Glasper, drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts and percussionist Adam Rudolph. It was a pleasure to premiere “BoB – A Palindrome” by bassist and UM Jazz Studies Professor Robert Hurst this morning 89.1 Jazz and to pair his new disc up with some of the great women jazz educators in the Detroit-Ann Arbor area: Geri Allen, Ellen Rowe and Marion Hayden for Women’s History Month.
