Heroes by Donald Harrison, Ron Carter, Billy Cobham

“To my understanding, jazz is the hardest music in the world to play,” says Donald Harrison, Jr. “From the beginning guys like Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis raised the bar so high—and Ron Carter and Billy Cobham are like that. They’re my heroes. The idea of jazz is to be the best you can be, and in order to compete you have to get to that level.”
A bandleader since the mid-‘80s, when he and Terence Blanchard formed the influential Harrison-Blanchard Quintet, and a prominent sideman with such giants as Art Blakey, Roy Haynes and Eddie Palmieri, Harrison—one of the strongest improvisers of his generation—is no stranger to the upper echelons of jazz expression. But several 2002 tours with Carter, Cobham and pianist James Williams in a quartet billed The Art Of Four made Harrison, now 43, feel “it was time for me to graduate to another level.”
“In my estimation, the Miles Davis group—the supergroup—with Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter has not been surpassed,” Harrison continues. “They walked the tightrope on Mount Everest, so to speak, with their knowledge of music and ability to move on that high level like a school of fish. If you hang around with people like Ron and Billy, maybe you can find that level and move on from there.”
It’s evident that Harrison attains the level he seeks on the five trio tracks and three Harrison-Carter duos that comprise Heroes—it’s one of the most satisfying documents of collective improvising I’ve heard in some time. Displaying the lucid simplicity of old masters, Carter and Cobham support and lead simultaneously in the most organic way. Without calling undue attention to their astonishing instrumental skills, they treat each tune as a discrete entity, subsuming their creativity to complement the function at hand.
“All the masters I played with are my heroes,” Harrison concludes. “I learned so much from all of them. This music is not received as it should be, and these guys go out every day and keep it going. They love jazz, and do everything they can to keep the standards as high as they can be.”
– Ted Panken