Sonic Creed Stefon Harris & Blackout

• 1 Dat Dere 05:23
• 2 Chasin' Kendall 07:50
• 3 Let's Take a Trip to the Sky 06:17
• 4 The Cape Verdean Blues 05:49
• 5 Go 05:13
• 6 Song of Samson 05:30
• 7 Throw It Away 05:46
• 8 Now 06:44
• 9 Gone Too Soon 05:25
• Total Runtime 53:57

Info for Sonic Creed

The album is Stefon Harris and Blackout’s first recording since Urbanus (which earned a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Jazz Album in 2009), and 2004’s Evolution. The conception and birth of Sonic Creed came about as a result of Harris bursting with this music, this sound, and this album, inside of him. “What pushes me to release a new album is the answer to the question, if I don’t record this music will the sound of this music exist in the world? And if the answer is no, then we have to go into the studio!”, said Harris.

Sonic Creed is about music that chronicles the story of a people and their time on earth. It aims to be a reflection of African American life in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. And, it is a sonic manifestation and creed of family, community and legacy. “These core assets of the Black community are the messages of Sonic Creed, and we honor our legacy by exploring the music of masters such as Bobby Hutcherson, Abbey Lincoln, Wayne Shorter and Horace Silver. Their music is timeless and is the literal aural expression of those community assets”, said Harris.

The album therefore serves as a representation, through Stefon Harris and Blackout’s existence and experience, of Black American life in the present. “I want to document our time on the planet in the here and NOW! What is the sound of ‘Black Lives Matter’ for example? What is the sound of electing the first African American President of The United States? What is the sound of right now? This is what I’m interested in Blackout representing and reflecting. It’s art for our sake”, stated Harris.

Stefon Harris, vibraphone, marimba
James Francies, piano (1-8), keyboards (1, 3, 7)
Joshua Crumbly, bass (1-8)
Terreon Gully, drums (1-8)
Casey Benjamin, alto saxophone (1, 2, 4, 5), soprano saxophone (6, 7), vocoder (3, 8)
Mike Moreno, guitar (1, 4, 5, 7, 8)
Jean Baylor, vocals (3, 8)
Regina Carter, violin (8)
Joseph Doubleday, marimba (9)
Daniel Frankhuizen, cello (8)
Pedrito Martinez, percussion (1, 2, 4, 6)
Felix Peikli, clarinet, bass clarinet (1, 2, 4-6, 8)
Elena Pinderhughes, flute (4, 8)

Stefon Harris
A disciple of Lionel Hampton, Milt Jackson and Bobby Hutcherson, Stefon Harris belongs to the grand lineage of vibraphonists in jazz. Well known to San Francisco audiences —he was a member of the SFJAZZ Collective from 2007–13 — Harris is a master player, a true virtuoso. Whenever he picks up his mallets, he hovers “over his vibraphone and marimba with hummingbird movements, hands fluttering in a blur across the keys,” says The New York Times.

Recognized as “the real deal” at a young age, Harris performed with Joe Henderson, Wynton Marsalis, Buster Williams, Kenny Barron, Cassandra Wilson and many other legends – and made his recording debut as a leader on Blue Note Records in 1998, when he was only 25. Winner of “best vibraphonist” awards in DownBeat and JazzTimes polls, Harris has gone on to become a mentor to a new generation of players, both on the bandstand and in academia. On Sonic Creed, his latest album with his razor-sharp quintet Blackout, the vibraphonist assembles some of the most respected veterans of the current scene, along with several of its fresh young talents. Together they pay tribute to the jazz pantheon — Art Blakey, Abbey Lincoln, Horace Silver, Wayne Shorter — while exploring closely related territories: pop, R&B, hip-hop. The album was named Jazz Album of the Year by the iconic New Jersey jazz radio station WBGO.

This album contains no booklet.