Ring Of Fire - Rudresh Mahanthappa by Braithwaite & Katz

"Ring of Fire" is a track from alto saxophone star Rudresh Mahanthappa's "Hero Trio” album, out June 19, 2020 via Whirlwind Recordings. Joining him are longtime compatriots bassist François Moutin and drummer Rudy Royston.

Over the course of an illustrious career Mahanthappa’s music making has constantly pushed at the artistic boundaries to encompass such diverse influences as classic bebop, the flash and fury of electric fusion, and the complexities of Carnatic music, while always maintaining a clear sense of his own fiercely intelligent, uncompromising musical personality.

On this recording, his sixteenth release as a leader/co-leader, he has moved the focus away from his own compositions to pay tribute to his greatest influences with an album of interpretations. All of the material is presented in Mahanthappa’s characteristically original arrangements. It’s a wide-ranging session encompassing the music of Charlie Parker and Stevie Wonder, Keith Jarrett, Ornette Coleman and the Johnny Cash hit “Ring of Fire” (which was written by June Carter Cash and Merle Kilgore, and first recorded by June’s younger sister, Anita Carter).

Mahanthappa’s tricky arrangement of “Ring of Fire” is a surprise. At first listen the piece seems like an unadorned rendering of the iconic song. But the addition of one beat to the third measure subtly changes the rhythmic cadence. “But even doing that is keeping in the context of his music,” Mahanthappa says. “You look at his music and it has phrases of all sorts of bar length. He and Dolly Parton write with complex, surprising phrase lengths that feel really natural and conversational. Cash is someone that inhabited large chunks of my childhood.”

RUDRESH MAHANTHAPPA
Hailed by Pitchfork as “jaw-dropping… one of the finest saxophonists going,” alto saxophonist, composer and educator Rudresh Mahanthappa is widely known as one of the premier voices in jazz of the 21st century. He has over a dozen albums to his credit, including the acclaimed Bird Calls. Rudresh has been named alto saxophonist of the year for seven of eight years running in DownBeat Magazine’s International Critics’ Polls, and six times by the Jazz Journalists’ Association. He won alto saxophonist of the year in the 2015-2017 JazzTimes Magazine Critics’ Polls and was named the Village Voice’s Best Jazz Artist in 2015. He has also received the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, among other honors, and is currently the Anthony H.P. Lee ’79 Director of Jazz at Princeton University. Mahanthappa has worked with artists including Jack DeJohnette, Mark Dresser, Danilo Pérez, and Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra.