In 1963, Joe Henderson arrived on the New York jazz scene with a sound that was difficult to mistake for anyone else’s. That same year, he recorded his debut album, Page One, and over the years that followed, his tenor saxophone appeared on some of Blue Note’s landmark recordings, including Song for My Father by Horace Silver, The Sidewinder by Lee Morgan, and Point of Departure by Andrew Hill. In just a few years, Henderson went from being a new name on the scene to one of the musicians shaping the sound of modern jazz in the 1960s.
On 13 October, In The Mood Jazz Club presents Joe Henderson Revisited Quartet. Conceived by pianist Mihail Donchev and created with deep respect for Joe Henderson’s musical legacy, the quartet brings together tenor saxophonist Arnau Garrofé, double bassist Mihail Ivanov, and drummer Atanas Popov especially for this evening. Together, the four musicians will explore Henderson’s music through their own sound and perspective, more than six decades after it was created.
On albums such as Inner Urge and Mode for Joe, Henderson developed a musical language in which complex harmony was never an end in itself, while the tension and unpredictability of improvisation kept the music constantly intriguing. Compositions such as Recorda Me, Inner Urge, and Isotope gradually became part of the modern jazz repertoire, music that demands virtuosity while leaving enough freedom for each musician to bring their own artistic voice.
And it is precisely this freedom that lies at the heart of Joe Henderson Revisited Quartet. Arnau Garrofé takes on the tenor saxophone with his distinctive sound and impressive technique, while Mihail Donchev shapes the quartet’s harmonic world at the piano. Joining them on stage are two of the most prominent jazz musicians on the Bulgarian scene, double bassist Mihail Ivanov and drummer Atanas Popov.
New York, the 1960s. We return to a time when the boundaries between hard bop, modal jazz, and free jazz were beginning to blur, and artists like Joe Henderson were searching for new musical spaces. As Henderson himself said in a 1994 interview with music journalist Graham Reid:
“Part of the spirit then was just to reject all that stuff like bar lines and key signatures.”
— Joe Henderson