list.co.uk/festival Robert Glasper | FESTIVAL MUSIC

ALL THAT JAZZ Jazz pianist Robert Glasper talks to Stewart Smith about hip hop, R&B and bringing the genre to a new generation

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T exas-born pianist Robert Glasper revels in straddling jazz, the hip hop and R&B. His Grammy- winning Black Radio albums saw likes of him working with Erykah Badu, Mos Def and Jill Scott, and he is among the crack squad of jazzers to play on rapper Kendrick Lamar’s album-of-the- year contender To Pimp a Butterl y. Following three albums with his electric Experiment outi t, Glasper’s new Blue Note album Covered reunites him with his acoustic trio bandmates, bassist Vicente Archer and drummer Damion Reid. ‘It was a way to come back to playing piano trio, but not in the same way I’d done it before,’ he explains. ‘After Black Radio came out I acquired a more mainstream R&B and hip hop audience. I wanted to do an album that catered to them as well as to my jazz fans.’ Glasper has been quoted as saying that Black Radio was his way of giving jazz ‘a big ass slap’. Covered is similarly motivated, bringing songs by Kendrick Lamar, Bilal, Radiohead and Joni Mitchell into an acoustic jazz idiom.

6–13 Aug 2015 THE LIST FESTIVAL 67

PHOTO © JANETTE BECKHAM