“If I was taking up jazz today, then Roy Hargrove would be my role model” – said the world famous Polish trumpeter Tomas Stanko. Born in 1969, Hargrove was an acknowledged musician while still a teenager and his supreme talent attracted the attention of Wynton Marsalis. He was then able to play with Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard and Bobby Hutcherson. He then moved to New York and not long after, recorded his first CD with saxophonist Bobby Watson. In 1990 he released his own album. He was soon classified as a “young lion”, one of the great hopes of the future shaping new jazz trends. In 1994 he signed a contract with Verve Records and has since released eight albums for them. In 1995 he won the poll conducted among readers of influential American magazine Down Beat. The only greater acknowledgement for him than this was that he was invited to partner Joe Henderson, Stanley Turrentine, Johnny Griffin, Sonny Rollins and Jackie McLean. His career continues to skyrocket: in 2002 he joined up with Herbie Hancock and Michael Brecker in a “triumvirate” that released a concert album commemorating Miles Davis and John Coltrane. After an expedition into the arcane world of hip-hop jazz he formed a new quintet which again surveys a style very much to his liking, post-bop. The audience at his 2007 Jazz Spring concert can hear the first fruits of this latest enterprise in the form of material from his album Nothing Serious.

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