Billy Childs - Rebirth (2017) [Hi-Res]

On his new album Rebirth, Childs reaches back to the start of his almost astoundingly varied musical experience—leading a small jazz band of state-of-the-art musicians with his piano playing.

At his musical core, Childs is an improvising pianist. He has the ability to equally distill the harmonic and rhythmic languages of classical music and jazz into his playing. The wide-ranging vocabulary on the taut track “Tightrope” begs the question of Childs’ love of classical music; “I’m not just jazz,” he stresses. His insistent pulse and melodically probing introduction to song is a key to the Childs’ musical identity: open to extended harmonic possibilities as they come along, taking a flexible approach to time and leaving an open door for input from his bandmates.

Four-time Grammy® Award-winner Billy Childs remains one of the most diversely prolific and acclaimed artists working in music today. Childs’ canon of original compositions and arrangements has garnered him an additional 10 Grammy® Award nominations, the 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2009).

Childs released his first solo album, Take For Example, This... in 1988, on Windham Hill Jazz Records. It was the first of four critically acclaimed albums on the imprint, culminating with the celebrated Portrait Of A Player, in 1993. Childs’ multiple musical interests also include collaborations, arrangements, and productions for other world-renowned artists, including Yo-Yo Ma, The Kronos Quartet, Wynton Marsalis, Sting, Chris Botti, and Leonard Slatkin, among others. He has received orchestral commissions from The Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Los Angeles Master Chorale, The Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and The Lincoln Jazz Center Orchestra. In 2013 he premiered “Enlightened Souls,” a commission from Duke University featuring Dianne Reeves and the Ying Quartet, to commemorate fifty years of African-American students attending the school. In 2014 Childs released Map to the Treasure – Reimagining Laura Nyro (Sony Masterworks), which was produced by Larry Klein and features Reneé Fleming, Esperanza Spalding, Alison Krauss, Shawn Colvin, Rickie Lee Jones, Becca Stevens, Ledisi, Chris Botti, Yo-Yo Ma and Susan Tedeschi.

Billy Childs, piano
Steve Wilson, alto saxophone, soprano saxophone
Hans Glawischnig, acoustic bass
Eric Harland, drums