Hall of Heroes
Fronting a stellar quartet, Jared Hall salutes the trumpet voices that ignited his passion.
As heard on his energetic yet often reflective recording Influences (Origin), Jared Hall pays affectionate homage to trumpet players who fired his imagination when he was first delving into jazz. Buoyant opener "Song for Shaw" conjures the late Woody Shaw's exuberant sound; the tender "Dear Roy" serves as both an elegy for and evocation of the ballad style of Roy Hargrove; and "One for Wallace" evinces Miles Davis acolyte Wallace Roney, who passed away in 2020 from the effects of COVID.
Hall also honors the living with "Professor B.L.," a tip of the hat to cherished mentor Brian Lynch, under whom he studied at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, and with "Harrell," a salute to Tom Harrell, whose recordings have had an enduring impact on the Spokane based trumpeter and educator. Nicholas Payton also figures in the mix, as Hall closes the collection with "Dream Steps," a composition he based on the New Orleans trumpeter's version of "You Stepped Out of a Dream." "I've had people ask me what my influences are, like, 'I'm really hearing Donald Byrd in your playing, I'm hearing Eddie Henderson,' " Hall says by phone from his home in Washington in June. "And I really love those players, I'm very familiar with them, but they're not the players that I've listened to over and over again, or transcribed. So I thought that this was a good opportunity with these tunes [on Influences] — they're really coming out of these voices I enjoy or that have moved me as a player."
Hall also takes the opportunity to spotlight his playing and composing in a quartet setting, allowing his burnished sound to come to the fore a bit more than on previous recordings where he shared the frontline with a saxophonist (Vincent Herring on 2021's
Seen on the Scene and Troy Roberts on 2017's
Hallways). Certainly, his bandmates feature prominently here, particularly pianist Tal Cohen, a frequent colleague and dear friend from Hall's UM days. "He's just so inventive," the trumpeter says. "He's always listening, and he'll not only make me sound good if I'm getting into something musically, but he also throws me
little curveballs, so I really appreciate that, too." Like Cohen, bassist Michael Glynn shares history with the trumpeter. After he completed his master's studies at UM, Hall returned to his native Washington and settled in Seattle in 2015. Hall then picked up a monthly residency at Tula's Jazz Club and hired Glynn for the gig. "That Scene on the Seen group really was born out of that residency," Hall says. "But Michael, we've continued to play music, and he's such a stellar musician, I thought he would be a great fit for this quartet."
Drummer John Bishop also seemed a logical choice for the session. Not only a dynamic percussive presence and deft colorist, Bishop also runs the Seattle-based Origin label with fellow drummer Matt Jorgensen. "It just made sense to have the project on Origin, in the sense that there's a cohesiveness, there's a community that's kind of built out of this," says Hall of his second release for the imprint.
Now back in his native Spokane, Hall teaches at Whitworth University, his alma mater. He's surrounded by family, as well as memories — high school band director Michael Jones giving him a CD of Lee Morgan's The
Sidewinder, which turned him into a jazz addict; sitting in at Ella's Supper Club with his Whitworth professors; getting coffee with and invaluable advice from trumpet teacher and jazz department head Dan Keberle.
Hall could easily fill an Influences Volume II with compositions inspired by the likes of Morgan, Randy Brecker, Kenny Dorham and Freddie Hubbard. His ideal is to apply what he's absorbed from those players into his own sound. "That's one thing that's really important to me, that I'm still searching for," he explains. "OK, these are some of the trumpet voices that I'm really digging into and have dug into, but hopefully I'm kind of starting to move things in my own direction. It's OK, when you're developing and learning, to imitate, and of course you should start to have some of that in your playing, but you might not necessarily want to stay there."