Bloomington (album)

Bloomington
Live album by
Branford Marsalis
ReleasedMay 1993
RecordedSeptember 23, 1991
GenreJazz
Length1:19:02
LabelSony Music
ProducerDr. George Butler (executive producer); Delfeayo Marsalis
Branford Marsalis chronology
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
(1992) 		Bloomington
(1993) 		Buckshot LeFonque
(1994)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[1]
Entertainment WeeklyB+[3]
Los Angeles Times[2]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings[4]

Bloomington is a 1993 live jazz album by saxophonist Branford Marsalis, featuring Jeff "Tain" Watts on drums and Robert Hurst on bass. It was recorded at a concert in Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana (hence the title of the album) on September 23, 1991, while the trio was on tour.[5] The concert occurred one month before the release of Marsalis's album The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, featuring the same lineup, and three of Bloomington's six tracks are taken from that album. Bloomington peaked at number 9 on the Top Jazz Albums chart.[1]

Branford Marsalis's younger brother Delfeayo, who co-produced the album, was effusive in praising it, calling it "the most incredible concert recorded in our generation."[5] Professional critics' views were mixed. In his AllMusic review, Scott Yanow calls the album "very long-winded and rather dull" and says that Marsalis "seems content to play the part of a chameleon, doing his impressions of late-period Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and (when he switches to soprano) Ornette Coleman."[1] The Los Angeles Times praised the recording, saying "the telling of what he finds is revealing and beautiful in ways only the best improvisational music can be."[2] Jazz historian David Hajdu called the recording "a career-positioning statement in matter-of-fact musical terms" and "insular music for the hard-bop elite" in a review for Entertainment Weekly[3]

  1. ^ a b c Yanow, Scott. "Bloomington". AllMusic. Retrieved 2014-10-20.
  2. ^ a b Kohlhaase, Bill (1993-06-06). "Album Review: Branford Marsalis, Espressivo". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2014-10-20.
  3. ^ a b Hajdu, David (1993-06-04). "Bloomington". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 2014-10-20.
  4. ^ Cook, Richard; Morton, Brian (2008). The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings (9th ed.). Penguin. p. 948. ISBN 978-0-141-03401-0.
  5. ^ a b "Bloomington". BranfordMarsalis.com. Archived from the original on 13 September 2014.