MARCUS MILLER EVOKES MUSICAL, CULTURAL & SPIRITUAL REVOLUTION WITH RENAISSANCE

Includes 8 richly inspired original compositions with inspired interpretations of songs by WAR, Janelle Monáe, The Jackson 5, Ivan Lins and more.

A generation is roughly defined as a period of about 30 years. 30 years ago – in the early ‘80s - America was rolling with Ronald Reagan at the wheel and his conservative “back to family values” tenets. A similar traditionalism was also being adopted by several prominent up-and-coming jazz musicians. While most of the then-young flock was looking back, Marcus Miller was looking ahead. By the middle of that decade in 1986, Marcus - the musician, composer and producer - was at the helm of one of the most impactful modern jazz masterpieces of the era with some futuristic roots music he composed for the legendary Miles Davis entitled Tutu.

Now with Renaissance in 2012, Marcus Miller surveys the landscape of not just music but society as a whole. In the same profound way that anointed gospel-soul singer Sam Cooke prophesized 50 years before in 1963, Miller feels that “a change is gonna come.” And just as with Tutu, he is ahead of the storm with Renaissance, for release on August 7, 2012 from Concord Jazz, a division of Concord Music Group. Fortified by a team of hungry young players that includes trumpeters Sean Jones and Maurice Brown, alto saxophonist Alex Han, drummer Louis Cato, guitarists Adam Agati and Adam Rogers, and keyboardist Kris Bowers along with veteran keys wizards Federico Gonzalez Peña and Bobby Sparks, Miller is creating the soundtrack for this musical, cultural and spiritual revolution.

“I feel like a page is turning,” Miller muses. “The last of our heroes are checking out and we are truly entering a new era. Politically, things have polarized and are coming to a head. Musically, we’ve got all these cool ways to play and share music - MP3 files, internet radio and satellite radio - but the music is not as revolutionary as the media. It’s time for a rebirth.”

Renaissance finds Miller offering up an especially emotive 13-song collection that includes eight richly inspired original compositions that swing from a tip of the porkpie to the CTI Records sound of the `70s (“CEE-TEE-EYE”) to an introspective and ultimately hope-filled rumination about the island off the coast of Dakar in Africa known as “Gorée (Go-ray).” Renaissance also includes five cover songs that canvas works by soul-jazz culture band WAR, new wave-soul starlet Janelle Monáe, New York jazz dignitary Weldon Irvine, Brazilian musical ambassador Ivan Lins and Christian composer Luther “Mano” Hanes. Though the CD primarily features Miller’s smokin’ new band, it also features special guest vocalists Dr. John, Rubén Blades and Gretchen Parlato.

Praise for Renaissance

"American multi-instrumentalist Marcus Miller, the last primary collaborator of jazz legend Miles Davis, has a new album. Renaissance is Miller's eighth studio project since his debut, Suddenly, in 1983.  It showcases an especially emotive 13-song collection that includes eight original compositions with richly inspired interpretations of songs by WAR, Janelle Monáe, The Jackson 5, Ivan Lins and more."

 Voice of America
"...a true musical legend." ~ The Revivalist

"A circus big top felt like just the right place to hear that breathtaking trapeze-artist of the bass guitar, Marcus Miller. But Miller's high-energy show was far from being merely the usual fast solos and crunching drum breaks of so many celebrity jazz-funk gigs. A svengali to Miles Davis on his best late-period albums, Miller is a sophisticated musical thinker as well as a finger-busting virtuoso and canny entertainer." ~ The Guardian (UK)