Fly is the cooperative jazz trio of saxophonist Mark Turner, drummer Jeff Ballard and bassist Larry Grenadier.
The group first surfaced as the Jeff Ballard Trio in 2000 on one track of the anthology Originations, curated by Chick Corea (Ballard was Chick's drummer at the time) and became Fly with the release of their first album, on Savoy, in 2004. Association between the players however goes back much further. Grenadier and Ballard played music together as teenagers in California in the early 1980s and subsequently gigged together often. They both migrated to the US's East coast in 1990 where they met Turner, and the three musicians have played in diverse permutations and contexts since then. In Fly, Turner, Grenadier and Ballard all write material. Mark Turner: “Sometimes it’s the saxophone carrying the melody. Other times it’s the bass or drums. We spread out the frontline duties among us.
Jazz saxophonist Joe Lovano said about their interplay on the Year of the Snake-album: "Fly is a beautiful trio, they play with a wonderful clarity. And Mark plays with a brilliant execution on his horn. [...] He plays with an amazing range on his instrument. That trio has a classical approach in the way the music is written and the way they come off it in the rhythm and in the attitude they're playing. They're improvising but their dialogue is more classical in nature, the way it feels. [...] That's expression, the waves, the life forms, the wind. Fly sounds lovely and beautiful and their music has a real presence, it captures you." [1]
Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea was an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader and occasional percussionist. His compositions "Spain", "500 Miles High", "La Fiesta", "Armando's Rhumba" and "Windows" are widely considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis's band in the late 1960s, he participated in the birth of jazz fusion. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever. Along with McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett, Corea is considered to have been one of the foremost pianists of the post-John Coltrane era.
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Larry Grenadier is an American jazz double bassist.
Mark Turner is an American jazz saxophonist.
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Jeff Ballard is an American jazz drummer. He has played with Ray Charles and Pat Metheny and played periodically with Chick Corea in many groups such as Origin and the Chick Corea New Trio. He also played with many New York–based jazz musicians such as Reid Anderson, Brad Mehldau, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Mark Turner, Miguel Zenon and Eli Degibri. He has also played with the Joshua Redman Elastic Band.
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Marcus Gilmore is an American jazz drummer. In 2009, New York Times critic Ben Ratliff included Gilmore in his list of drummers who are "finding new ways to look at the drum set, and at jazz itself", saying, "he created that pleasant citywide buzz when someone new and special blows through New York clubs and jam sessions".
Fly is an album by the band Fly, drummer Jeff Ballard, bassist Larry Grenadier and saxophonist Mark Turner which was recorded in 2003 and released by the Savoy Jazz label the following year.
Year of the Snake is the third album by Fly, consisting drummer Jeff Ballard, bassist Larry Grenadier and saxophonist Mark Turner, recorded in January 2011 and released on ECM in Aprilthe following year.
Sky & Country is the second album by Fly—consisting drummer Jeff Ballard, bassist Larry Grenadier and saxophonist Mark Turner—recorded in 2008 and released on ECM the following year.
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