Corridors Kendrick Scott, Feat. Reuben Rogers, Walter Smith III

• 1 What Day Is It? 04:54
• 2 Corridors 07:45
• 3 A Voice Through The Door 06:52
• 4 One Door Closes 00:40
• 5 Isn’t This My Sound Around Me? 05:08
• 6 One Door Closes, Another Opens 04:53
• 7 Your Destiny Awaits 05:44
• 8 Another Opens 00:51
• 9 Threshold 05:40
• Total Runtime 42:27

Info for Corridors

For his fifth outing, American drummer/composer Kendrick Scott embraces the trio format for the first time as a leader with the bright assistance of saxophonist Walter Smith III (Ambrose Akinmusire, Terence Blanchard), and bassist Reuben Rogers (Charles Lloyd, Joshua Redman). The album, titled Corridors, is exclusively made of Scott originals (composed during lockdown) with the exception of “Isn’t This My Sound Around Me?” by the great late vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson. This piece, displaying shambling yet elegant brushwork at the take off, balances a finely composed theme with an extrovert swinging posture during the soloists’ digressions. Scott and Rogers pull the needlepoint together nicely.

Still and all, the disc kicks off with the impressive “What Day is It?”, whose theme flourishes with a classy bass groove, nervous cymbal activity, and expedite saxophone melody. A relentless pedal point lives through the improvisations, occasionally slipping into a swinging pulse, with Smith infusing a mix of folk and post-bop flavors in the melodic sequences. The title cut, which starts off with a beautiful bass soliloquy, demonstrates the scope of Scott’s open-minded musicality by employing a pensive charm and genuine simplicity. Smith bores into conversational phrasing by pouring transparent ideas with excellent technique and taste.

“One Door Closes” and “Another Opens” are less-than-a-minute vignettes expressed with fittingly layered saxophone and impeccable bass/drums cooperation, respectively. The titles are concatenated on “One Door Closes, Another Opens”, which, marrying melodic and textural material with emotional heft, has a soulful croon reinforcing the proceedings. This number pays tribute to the ones who died and were born during the pandemic.

The album concludes with the stirring “Threshold”, a twisted blues whose plain-spoken motivic theme leaves a groovy thang in the air. The dynamics are on high, and the lush licks recall John Coltrane and Kenny Garrett.

Kendrick Scott, drums
Walter Smith III, tenor saxophone
Reuben Rogers, bass

Kendrick Scott
was born in Houston, Texas and grew up in a family of musicians. By age 8 he had taken up the drums and he later attended Houston’s renowned High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, a school which has produced an impressive array of musical talent including Scott’s label mates Jason Moran and Robert Glasper, as well pop star Beyoncé and many others. While still attending HSPVA, Scott won several DownBeat Magazine student awards, as well as the Clifford Brown/Stan Getz Award from the International Association of Jazz Educators. He was later awarded a scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music, where he majored in music education.

Scott has toured with Herbie Hancock, Charles Lloyd, The Crusaders, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Kurt Elling, and Terence Blanchard, also appearing on several of the trumpeter’s Blue Note albums including Flow (2005), A Tale Of God’s Will (2007), and Magnetic (2013). Scott’s first two releases on Blue Note as a leader presented his band Kendrick Scott Oracle: We Are The Drum (2015) and A Wall Becomes A Bridge (2019). Scott was also a member of the Blue Note All-Stars, a supergroup formed for the label’s 75th Anniversary featuring Ambrose Akinmusire, Robert Glasper, Derrick Hodge, Lionel Loueke and Marcus Strickland who released the album Our Point Of View in 2017. Scott’s 2023 Blue Note album Corridors finds him paring down to a trio with saxophonist Walter Smith III and bassist Reuben Rogers.

This album contains no booklet.