Kenny Garrett

Born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1960, Kenny Garrett emerged in the late 1970s on the American jazz scene with an incisive alto style rooted in post‑bop but open to hard bop, fusion and rhythmic currents from Africa and Asia. Trained within the orbit of the Duke Ellington Orchestra under Mercer Ellington from 1978, Garrett went on to play with Woody Shaw, Freddie Hubbard and Art Blakey, joining the Jazz Messengers in 1986. His career as a leader began with Introducing Kenny Garrett in 1985 and developed through albums such as African Exchange Student (1990), Black Hope (1992), Pursuance: The Music of John Coltrane (1996), Songbook (1997), Beyond the Wall (2006), Seeds from the Underground (2012), Pushing the World Away (2013), Do Your Dance! (2016) and Sounds from the Ancestors (2021). Between 1987 and 1991 Garrett was also a member of Miles Davis’s group, a decisive period in his development, after which he multiplied sideman projects with Marcus Miller, Roy Haynes, Chick Corea and John McLaughlin. On alto saxophone, soprano and flute, Garrett has developed a direct, dense and mobile language in which virtuosity remains tied to song, groove and collective improvisation.