One of my favorite pastimes is writing about jazz for ArtsATL.org, the Atlanta arts community website. In 2009, as the Atlanta Journal Constitution, like most newspapers in America, was thinning, one of the areas that had to be cut back was coverage of the arts. Catherine Fox and Pierre Ruhe, at that time leading critics for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, founded ArtsATL to fill the gap.
A few months ago, I was able to land an interview with jazz trumpeter Russell Gunn as he was preparing for the Atlanta Symphony Hall May 26 performance of his composition The Blues and Its People. It was the kickoff event for the 2023 Atlanta Jazz Festival and a tribute to the 50th anniversary of Amari Baraka’s Blues People: Negro Music in White America, which traces Black music from slavery to contemporary jazz.
An article about a piece of music or a musician is a bit like a television program about a travel destination. It’s just an introduction, an observation. I can call Russell Gunn‘s work on a trumpet masterful, brilliant, pulsating, fierce yet melodic, diverse. Many others already have. But you have to listen to Gunn to understand how he fulfills all those adjectives and blends so many genres into his playing.
Plus, Gunn is more than a trumpeter. He’s a composer, an arranger, a leader, as was so clearly and brilliantly demonstrated that evening at Atlanta Symphony Hall by Gunn and his 26-piece Royal Krunk Jazz Orkestra. Yes, 26 jazz musicians who are defined by the their music as improvisers playing what might seem an oxymoron, a carefully scripted freedom dance.
As our discussion ranged beyond the work to the subject of jazz in general, Gunn affirmed the historical perspective that jazz stems from the work of Louis Armstrong. “The entirety of what we do comes from a source and it can all be traced back to Louis Armstrong,” he said. “All roads lead to Louis Armstrong and all roads come out of that. You know that if your honest with yourself as a musician.”