2024 marks 25 years of GRAMMY-winning composer/trumpet player/multi-instrumentalist Darren Barrett as a leader. In the midst of a surge of boundless creativity, he announces the release of two albums simultaneously on July 12: The Get Down 4 Real: Step Step Steppin’; and dB-ish: The Path To Our Truth, both via his own dB Studios.
Today, he premieres “The Get Down 4 Real,” the first single from the former album, which is a funk album with jazz accents around James Brown-inspired drum backbeats.
Barrett tells American Blues Scene:
The Get Down 4 Real project is 1970s soul and funk grooves with contemporary jazz flavors. It encompasses the blues, repetition, call and response phrases and the spirit of African-American music. It is music meant to make you dance.
Forthcoming albums are planned under different project names: Time For Romance (ballads), Energy In Motion (smooth jazz), Trumpet Vibes (reggae/jazz mix), with other projects to be titled, including albums on micro-tonality, the Electronic Valve Instrument, ‘90s hip-hop and Detroit house music. Last year, he released the straight-ahead jazz album Live And Direct: Blue Harbor in August and the electronic, experimental All Things Brass and Technology in December.
On The Get Down 4 Real: Step Step Steppin’, Barrett makes subtle but effective use of effects pedals on his trumpet, including delay and wah wah. The album features an incredible support cast: keyboardist Santiago Bosch (Donald Harrison, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Esperanza Spalding); Warren Pettey, who has performed at Newport Jazz Festival, on keys; guitar master Jeffrey Lockhart (Beyoncé, Dido); Clara Moser, who has been featured by Bass Musician Magazine, along with Youngchae Jeong and Paul Reinhold on bass; drummer Julian Miltenberger; and Judy Soberanes on percussion on “Flow Against the Flow.”
Bosch, Pettey, Jeong, Soberanes, and Miltenberger also join Barrett on dB-ish: The Path To Our Truth, with the title track set to be released June 11.
An Associate Professor at Berklee College of Music, Barrett credits are impeccable. He played on GRAMMY Award Esperanza Spalding’s GRAMMY Award-winning Radio Music Society. He’s studied with Donald Byrd and performed or recorded with Wayne Shorter, Kenny Garrett, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Elvin Jones, Jackie McLean, Herbie Hancock, Roy Hargrove Big Band, Common, will.i.am, Tabou Combo, D’Angelo, Queen Latifah, and Antonio Hart. He won a GRAMMY recording with Esperanza Spalding.
Darren Barrett is endorsed by Schilke Musical Instruments.
