There’s one thing that jazz vibraphonist Joel Ross and his fellow Blue Note Record artists love about the legendary jazz label.
It’s not stuck in the past.
As music has shifted and convulsed over the years, the label has shifted along with it.
What started out as a jazz label in 1939 is now home to multigenre artists who fuse jazz with rock, soul and blues.
“The musicians, we never call it jazz in the first place,” said Ross, one of five Blue Note musicians on the lineup for the label’s 85th anniversary tour that’s coming to the HSL Properties Tucson Jazz Festival on Jan. 20. “We call it music tied to the performers who are playing.”
Ross will join fellow labelmates pianist Gerald Clayton, drummer Immanuel Wilkins, drummer Kendrick Scott and bassist Matt Brewer for the concert, which comes at the end of the 10th annual festival that kicks off Friday, Jan. 12, with trumpet great Arturo Sandoval at the Rialto Theatre.
This will be Ross’s first time performing in Tucson, and from what he’s heard from colleagues who have played the Tucson Jazz Festival, he said he’s excited. The Blue Note quintet will play 37 anniversary shows now through March; the tour opens in Detroit before it comes here.
“I’m looking forward to us coming and paying respect to the label while also showing where we are now and figuring out where we’re trying to go,” he said.
Blue Note Records artists, from left, Joel Ross, Kendrick Scott, Matt Brewer, Gerald Clayton and Immanuel Wilkins are playing a special concert to celebrate the label's 85th anniversary.
Ross has played with several of the quintet members, including Wilkins, who has been on Ross’s three Blue Note albums. He is releasing his fourth album, “nublues,” on Feb. 9, a collection of original and standard blues and ballads.
For Ross, who started playing vibraphone at age 10, joining Blue Note in 2018 was an impossible dream come true. The Chicago native and his twin brother started out as drummers when they were toddlers before Ross took to mallet instruments and his brother stuck with drums. They played in the church band and were inspired by gospel as well as the R&B and Motown they heard at home.
Of course, Chicago blues permeated everything.
Once Ross, 28, switched to vibraphone when he joined Chicago’s all city jazz band, he started exploring the music and lives of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Milton Jackson and Thelonious Monk, all of whom served as his jazz foundation.
The vibraphone surely doesn’t immediately come to mind when you consider jazz, Ross allowed. But since the 1930s, when Lionel Hampton introduced the musical device into a jazz setting, the instrument has gained in popularity, he said.
Don’t be surprised if you feel like you’re imposing on a private jam session when the Blue Note quintet takes the stage at Fox Tucson Theatre, 17 W. Congress St. The musicians have an intimate familiarity with one another that comes through in their performances.
“I’m looking forward to it because of how comfortable we all are with each other. I think it’s going to be a nice tour,” said Ross. “We all know each other, have played with each other.”
The concert starts at 2 p.m. Tickets are $29-$60 through tucsonjazzfestival.org.
For a complete lineup of jazz festival concerts and events, visit tucsonjazzfestival.org.
