Rudresh Mahanthappa Hero Trio

Saturday, January 11, 2025, 9 pm

APPEARING: BROOKLYN MARATHON @ LOOVE LABS ANNEX

Hailed by Pitchfork as “jaw-dropping… one of the finest saxophonists going,” alto saxophonist, composer  and educator Rudresh Mahanthappa is widely known as one of the premier voices in jazz of the 21st century.  He has over a dozen albums to his credit, including the acclaimed Bird Calls, which topped many critics’ best of-year lists for 2015 and was hailed by PopMatters as “complex, rhythmically vital, free in spirit while still  criss-crossed with mutating structures.” His most recent release, Hero Trio, was considered to be one of the  best jazz albums of 2020 by critics and fans alike. Rudresh has been named alto saxophonist of the year for  nine of the last thirteen years running in Downbeat Magazine’s International Critics’ Polls (2011-2013, 2015- 2018, 2020-1), and for five consecutive years by the Jazz Journalists’ Association (2009-2013) and again in  2016. He won alto saxophonist of the year in the 2015-2018 & 2020 JazzTimes Magazine Critics’ Polls and  was named the Village Voice’s "Best Jazz Artist" in 2015. He has also received the Guggenheim Fellowship  and the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, among other honors, and is currently the Anthony H. P. Lee ’79  Director of Jazz at Princeton University. 

Born in Trieste, Italy to Indian émigrés in 1971, Mahanthappa was brought up in Boulder, Colorado and  gained proficiency playing everything from current pop to Dixieland. He went on to studies at North Texas,  Berklee and DePaul University (as well as the Stanford Jazz Workshop) and came to settle in Chicago. Soon  after moving to New York in 1997 he formed his own quartet featuring pianist Vijay Iyer. The band recorded  an enduring sequence of albums, Black Water, Mother Tongue and Codebook, each highlighting  Mahanthappa’s inventive methodologies and deeply personal approach to composition. He and Iyer also  formed the duo Raw Materials. 

Coming deeper into contact with the Carnatic music of his parents’ native southern India, Mahanthappa  partnered in 2008 with fellow altoist Kadri Gopalnath and the Dakshina Ensemble for Kinsmen, garnering  wide acclaim. Apti, the first outing by Mahanthappa’s Indo-Pak Coalition (with Pakistani-born Rez Abbasi on  guitar and Dan Weiss on tabla), saw release the same year; Agrima followed nine years later and considerably  expanded the trio’s sonic ambitions. In 2020, Rudresh released Hero Trio, an album of “covers” paying  tribute to his musical heroes followed by the digital EP Animal Crossing in 2022 with the same trio. He also co-led a project celebrating the centenary of Charlie Parker with the blessing of the Parker estate.  

Mahanthappa has also worked with Jack DeJohnette, Mark Dresser, Danilo Pérez, Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro-Latin  Jazz Orchestra, the collaborative trios MSG and Mauger, the co-led quintet Dual Identity with fellow altoist  Steve Lehman, and another co-led quintet with fellow altoist and Chicago stalwart Bunky Green (Apex). His  exploratory guitar-driven quartets on Samdhi and Gamak featured David Gilmore and Dave “Fuze”  Fiuczynski, respectively. In 2015 he was commissioned by Ragamala Dance to create Song of the Jasmine for  dancers and a hybrid jazz/South Indian ensemble. He was also commissioned by the PRISM Saxophone  Quartet to compose a chamber piece, “I Will Not Apologize for My Tone Tonight,” which can be heard on  the quartet’s 2015 double-disc release Heritage/Evolution, Volume 1. He was recently commissioned by the  AACM’s Great Black Music Ensemble to compose “Finding Our Voice” which premiered in 2021. 

Mahanthappa is a Yamaha artist and uses Vandoren reeds exclusively.