Azar Lawrence’s third solo album People Moving was launched in 1976 on Prestige Records. The sensational jazz-funk venture has been reissued courtesy of Craft Recordings and is offered for stream or buy now.
The album options Lawrence on tenor, alto, and soprano saxophone alongside a bunch of unbelievable musicians together with Patrice Rushen on electrical piano and vocals, Harvey Mason on drums, and Mtume on percussion. Dedicated to the nice Charles Stepney, People Moving showcases Lawrence’s versatility as a saxophonist and composer, mixing components of funk, soul, and jazz right into a cohesive and groovy musical expertise.
To rejoice the discharge, Lawrence and his band–The Azar Lawrence Experience–might be performing the album in full at The Mint in Los Angeles on May 23. Tickets are on-sale right here.
Having grown up in Los Angeles within the early Nineteen Sixties, Lawrence grew up in a neighborhood the place jazz greats akin to Earl Palmer and Louis Jordan had been close to neighbors and he discovered a approach into the wonders of jazz after befriending Reggie Golson, son of one other legendary jazz saxophonist, Benny Golson.
“Reggie lived at the very, very tip of the Hollywood Hills, beyond The Monkees’ Davy Jones, and he had this amazing record collection,” Lawrence enthused, talking of his early influences in a uDiscover Music interview from 2020.
“That was how I first became familiar with Miles Davis, Hank Mobley, John Coltrane and many more. Hearing [Coltrane’s] A Love Supreme was just a revalatory experience. Just the way the horns sounded…it felt like they were speaking to me personally.”
A graduate of Horace Tapscott’s Pan African People’s Arkestra, with whom he performed as an adolescent, Lawrence later recorded three albums in as a few years for Bob Weinstock’s jazz imprint Prestige. It was whereas on tour in Europe with pianist McCoy Tyner, in 1974, that he was provided an opportunity to document as a frontrunner by producer Orrin Keepnews. The proprietor of the Milestone label, Keepnews was in Montreux, Switzerland, to seize Tyner’s quartet on the lakeside city’s well-known jazz competition.