Newspaper Article

ON THE RUN WITH: Roy Hargrove; Have Trumpet, Will Frolic

Woodward, Richard B

1994

Overview

\"I never thought of playing music as something to be scared of,\" he said. \"If there's something I can't hear, I won't play. But usually I can hear it. Even if it's a weird number of bars or an odd meter, I can tell. I can hear forms really well.\" He paused and raised his eyebrows. \"Of course, some cats will try to do you in. But I got something for them, too.\" A peal of laughter seemed to indicate that not many pianists could sneak in a knotty chord progression that his ears couldn't untie. Mr. [Roy Hargrove] still seeks advice from Mr. Marsalis, asking for exercises to improve his technique. \"He showed me a lip-slur thing that I still do every day,\" he said. \"It's an ascending phrase that you do in one breath. He showed it to me and it was, like, a whole page of 16th notes. I said, 'You can't do that in one breath.' I knew he could. I just wanted to see him do it. So he just goes, 'doodledoodledoodledoodledoodle.' \" Mr. Hargrove fell back again, laughing. \"Amazing, man.\" Mr. Hargrove's five-year plan includes forming a production company, writing film scores and producing a hip-hop record. \"I'd like to do a straight-up hip-hop record and not try to fuse it or call it acid jazz or whatever,\" he said. \"I think that it shouldn't be watered down by the terminology.\" As a member of a teen-age funk band in Dallas (average age, 14), he once opened for Doctor Dr. But the discipline of jazz, for now, commands most of Mr. Hargrove's attention.

• Publisher: New York Times Company
• Subject: BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION / HARGROVE, ROY / HARGROVE, ROY (BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH) / JAZZ / MARSALIS, WYNTON / MUSIC / WOODWARD, RICHARD B