Robert Glasper throws out the labels people put on music by breaking down the walls that restrict creativity

Source: Houston ChronicleAug.儲存 10--Musician Robert Glasper knows that experiments offer both risk and reward. So the pianist and composer boldly named his band the Robert Glasper Experiment rather than taking a safer path making eloquent bebop for the rest of his career. The 1995 graduate of the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts instead chose a more daring route.Glasper wanted to create something expansive and new, something that couldn't be labeled by connecting different genres. The title of his breakthrough album, last year's "Black Radio," suggested as much. It was jazzy and soulful, touched by gospel and hip-hop, and also the occasional Beatles reference. But the music on "Black Radio" didn't feel stitched together. It was fluid, something more than the sum of its parts. It earned Glasper a Grammy for best R&B album, which is telling because it could just have easily been nominated in hip-hop and jazz categories."I think once people get over using the word 'jazz,' and to just listen to what it is, they can find a way into it," says Glasper, 35. "Even the jazz police love Stevie Wonder. They love R&B. I think if you stop thinking of something as a jazz record and think of it as something else, to come at it with an honest ear, it's easier to like."In my mind, 'Black Radio' was never a jazz record. It was different sorts of music, each authentically in that moment. When you play with so many points of view, it takes on a different form sonically. It's R&B, but not. It's jazz, but not. It's not easy music to talk about in the terms that have been around for so long."Glasper and the Experiment will delve deeper into its affinity for Wonder on "Black Radio 2," which will be released Oct. 29. Glasper calls it "an R&B record that I produced and played on." The guest list, again, is impressive, with rappers Common and Snoop Lion, pop/rock singer Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy, R&B singers Jill Scott and Anthony Hamilton, and pop/jazz pianist/singer Norah Jones. Though Glasper is cautious about playing new music prior to its release, for fear of seeing it on YouTube, he may offer a glimpse of "Black Radio 2" when he brings the Experiment -- Casey Benjamin (saxophone and vocoder), Mark Colenburg (drums) and Derrick Hodge (bass) -- to Miller Outdoor Theatre Friday for his first hometown show in a while.Glasper has enjoyed a prolific 10-year run. "Black Radio 2" will be his sixth album as a bandleader -- five of the recordings were made for the storied jazz label Blue Note. He's also in demand as a pianist, touring and recording with artists like Maxwell, Bilal and Jose James, who similarly break from customary restrictions to make contemporary music. He's also played on recordings by rapper Q-Tip and jazz drummer (and fellow High School for the Performing and Visual Arts grad) Kendrick Scott."These people, and acts like the Roots or D'Angelo, they're my friends, and I think we get along because we weren't good at just one style," he says. "The Roots are a hip-hop band, but they can play with D'Angelo or jazz guys. The Experiment does hip-hop and soul, but we're trained in jazz and classical. We all have these out-there aesthetics, and they allow you to do more things."After Glasper graduated from high school, he moved to New York to study at the New School University, where he made his first collaborative connections. While growing up in Houston, his musical direction came largely from his mother, a classic Saturday night/Sunday morning performer."She was into all sorts of music," he says. "She'd do one kind of music in the clubs, funk and R&B and stuff like that. Sunday morning, she was a musical director. So she could go from Ella Fitzgerald to Liza Minnelli to Mahalia Jackson to Bette Mi新蒲崗迷你倉ler to Patti LaBelle." She was also a Beatles enthusiast, often putting a gospel or soulful spin on songs like "Blackbird."So Glasper's start was in gospel, which, he points out, "influenced just about all of the genres we love, though it's turning around now. All these genres are starting to influence contemporary gospel. It's taken on elements of hip-hop, rock, R&B. But playing in church trains you and helps you mingle with genres."While at the New School, Glasper worked with top-tier jazz players Christian McBride and Kenny Garrett. After graduation, he collaborated with hip-hop and soul players Q-Tip, J Dilla, Erykah Badu, Common and others. In 2004, Glasper released "Mood," a jazz album that caught the attention of Blue Note record label, which signed him.Glasper infuses his album titles with particular meanings. "Canvas," released on Blue Note in 2005, suggested a blankness he wanted to fill. His playing was beauteously liquid, melodic with occasional flashes of daring as he ran through nine originals and one composition by Herbie Hancock, who, along with Wonder, was a formidable influence on him. Two tracks near the album's end featured his New School friend Bilal contributing creative vocal parts that were the first teaser of what would come."In My Element" appeared two years later, and Glasper felt more comfortable pushing tradition. He again looked to Hancock, interpreting "Maiden Voyage" but turning it into a medley with art-rock band Radiohead's "Everything in Its Right Place." The album "Double Booked" came out in 2009. True to its title, it was split in half between Glasper's trio and his Experiment, with Casey Benjamin adding a colorful new flavor with his vocoder -- an electronic device that makes the human voice sound robotic -- and Mos Def adding some rhymes.After "Black Radio," musicians started to volunteer their services to Glasper. "It's great to be in a position where people want to work with me," he says. "Especially people in more popular genres. That's not really normal. Jazz is a small percentage of the overall musical pie, if you will. To have people from these kinds of music that have bigger percentages of that pie wanting to work with me is more than I could've hoped for."Glasper wrote with collaborators in mind for both "Black Radio" albums. The plan has been to do it without forcing voices onto the recording. "That was the magic of 'Black Radio,' it just sounded natural," he says. "That's the thing I brag on. That these different things come together organically."That approach led to Glasper's new take on "Jesus Children of America." He'd been doing occasional Stevie Wonder tribute shows, digging deep into the legend's songbook. The first show took place the day of the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Conn. Glasper, who has a 4-year-old son, says, "I simply couldn't imagine being in that place." Lalah Hathaway added vocals to Glasper's version of the song, which includes a poem read by Malcolm Jamal-Warner.Glasper now has more than a year of promoting "Black Radio 2" before him. He says thinking ahead can be a source of anxiety. "There are so many territories I want to go into, I'm just trying to figure it out," he says. "I may go back and make a little trio record. I just want whatever I do to make sense."The most tangible evidence of his success is out of sight. On one hand, Glasper's Grammy is tucked away under the bed for a logistical reason: On a shelf it could prove tempting to a toddler. Then the other: "I don't want anything to keep me from striving," he says. "I don't want to look at it and feel like I've made it."Copyright: ___ (c)2013 the Houston Chronicle Visit the Houston Chronicle at .chron.com Distributed by MCT Information Servicesmini storage