The quintessential musician's musician: tenor legend George Garzone with Randy Brecker, Luis Perdomo, Santi Debriano and "Tain" Watts.

Few musicians in jazz carry influence beyond their discography quite like George Garzone. For more than fifty years the tenor saxophonist has stood among the defining voices of the instrument, and as a revered educator whose students shaped jazz in their own right: Joshua Redman, Branford Marsalis, Donny McCaslin, Mark Turner, Seamus Blake and Chris Cheek all passed through his Berklee classroom, where this year marks his fiftieth on the faculty. Long known as the quintessential musician's musician, Garzone returns with Themes for Good Friends, built on artistry and relationships forged over a lifetime. The album unites trumpeter Randy Brecker, pianist Luis Perdomo, bassist Santi Debriano and drummer Jeff 'Tain' Watts, each an acclaimed bandleader, drawn together by decades of shared musical language. The session began when producer Simon Belelty, dazzled after a Garzone club date in New York, urged Debriano to assemble a band worthy of him. The two had met as students in Boston around 1970, and when Debriano proposed Brecker, Perdomo and Watts, Garzone said yes at once. The record opens with Coltrane's 'Theme for Ernie' in duo with Perdomo, an homage to both Coltrane and Stan Getz, whose sound first drew Garzone to the tenor as a boy. Archie Shepp's 'U-Jaama' brings in the full quintet, and 'It Will Happen to You' reworks Van Heusen's 'It Could Happen to You' into a joyful contrafact. Debriano's own 'Ripty-Boom' stretches the band at its widest, while Garzone's 'To Michael Brecker,' written the day he learned of the trumpeter's death, has tenor and trumpet share one unbroken melodic line instead of trading solos. 'The Mingus That I Knew' recalls a young Garzone unknowingly asking Charles Mingus to put out his cigar at the Village Vanguard. The album closes with Garzone and Watts taking apart Coltrane's 'Giant Steps,' its melody surfacing only in the final bars, the last piece cut that day at Rudy Van Gelder's studio.

Track Listing

• Theme for Ernie
• U-Jaama
• It Will Happen To You
• Ripty Boom
• Giant Steps
• Just Ring The Bell
• The Mingus That I Knew
• To Michael Brecker

Additional Details

Label: JOJO RECORDS

Genre: Jazz

Language: English

Run Time: 59:50 mins

Region: 0

Release Date: 11/06/26

UPC: 3341348170565