Red Clay

Red Clay is the next installment in my Tabula Rasa project.

This was on of the first jazz tunes I learned back when I started playing the saxophone in high school. It’s one of those melodies that sticks with you and feel so good to play.

For my arrangement, I wanted a little bit of funk going on, so there’s some nice clavinet work by Mike Blankenship, and a beautiful flugelhorn solo by Erik Jekabson.

Tabula Rasa means “blank slate”, and is an ode to starting fresh…in this case with my music. It’s definitely a nod to the past influences…Grover, Turrentine, Sanborn, Felder (I could go on and on 🙂 But it’s also something new for me – I’m working with a whole new crew of musicians:

Erik Jekabson on trumpet and flugelhorn
Mike Blankenship on keyboards
Scott Thompson on bass
Aaron Green on drums

All so talented and amazing to work with. Listen to the song below, and if you’re inspired, you can click through and hear more music, or purchase the track. Thanks for listening!