Roswell Rudd, a jazz ambassador

Roswell Rudd is a true jazz ambassador, as Martin Johnson reports ( Wall Street Journal ). In the last weeks alone he worked with or planned projects with musicians from China, Siberia, Puerto Rico and Cuba. And in his band Malicool he collaborates with the kora player Toumani Diabaté and other musicians from Mali. For this project he had to adjust his trombone sound to the hypnotic weave of African stringed instruments and balaphones. Diabaté could not participate in the band's performance at New York's club Jazz Standard due to visa problems. Rudd had started out as a dixieland trombonist, then came under the influence of Thelonious Monk and Herbie Nichols and soon became an important member of New York's avantgarde jazz. He had worked with ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax for years who opened his ears for other musical cultures. Besides his Mali project Rudd also works in more conventional settings, for instance in a duo with double bass player Mark Dresser or in a new quartet which he will debut this summer.