Multidirectional

Drummer and NEA Jazz Master Billy Hart releases his first live album, Multidirectional, with his longtime all-star quartet featuring saxophonist Mark Turner, pianist Ethan Iverson, and bassist Ben Street. Legendary drummer Billy Hart credits the great Rashied Ali for introducing him to the term "multidirectional" - a descriptor for the elusive, daring approach to the kit that Hart and others of his generation had developed intuitively in response to the increasing freedom and exploration of the era's jazz experimentation. - The album's release arrives just in time for Hart's 85th birthday, and vividly reveals that the beloved drummer still has surprises to reveal. Not that Hart is a stranger to adapting his distinctive voice to multifarious approaches from Quest, the post-bop quartet with Dave Liebman and Richie Beirach; the hard bop all-star group The Cookers, or Herbie Hancock's pioneering Mwandishi sextet - where he earned his sobriquet Jabali, Swahili for "rock." Then there's the long history with many of jazz's greatest artists, from Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, McCoy Tyner and Jimmy Smith to Bill Frisell, Charles Lloyd, Branford Marsalis and Joe Lovano. In 2022 he took his well-deserved place among the ranks of NEA Jazz Masters.