Charles Tolliver

On his Blue Note Records debut, With Love, Charles Tolliver presents his extraordinary big band charts and sui generis trumpet playing for the first time on a major U.S. label. Recorded in Bennett Studios' NORTH ROOM, the album has been nominated for a Grammy™ award..

For the occasion, Tolliver recruited a pan-generational lineup of home-run hitter soloists including pianists Stanley Cowell and Robert Glasper, saxophonists Billy Harper, Craig Handy, and Howard Johnson, trumpeter Keyon Harrold, and a cohort of A-list section men, Cecil McBee and Victor Lewis, all of whom draw on all their resources to articulate Tolliver's vision with a bravura performance.

Throughout the proceedings, Tolliver plays with the energy of an 18-year-old and the accumulated wisdom of fifty years of high-level improvising. "I refuse to ever consider myself as less fresh and new than the first time I realized I could do this," Tolliver told DownBeat. "It's not in my psyche to back off from the kind of energy we bring to the plate every time, even if I'm eligible to collect my Social Security check. What we were doing in the '60s is still so alive and well that it's fresh and new whenever you work on it. Anything coming in at this point can't supplant that."