Rudresh Mahanthappa: Kinsmen

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Gary Giddins wrote in the New Yorker: "Jazz musicians have two fundamental goals: creating music that keeps listeners wondering what’s next, and finding a novel context within which to explore old truths. … Whenever a musician achieves this synthesis, usually after years of apprenticeship and exploration, a rumble echoes through the jazz world. Such a rumble was heard last fall, when the thirty-seven-year-old alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa released an astonishing album, 'Kinsmen.' … While Mahanthappa was at Berklee, his older brother teasingly gave him an album called 'Saxophone Indian Style,' by Kadri Gopalnath. … Gopalnath … has perfected something that jazz saxophonists have been attempting for decades: moving beyond the Western chromatic scale into the realm of microtones. … Mahanthappa resolved to work with Gopalnath, using a grant to finance a visit to India. … Mahanthappa wrote music that blended Western harmony with South Indian traditions. … Mahanthappa’s collaboration with Gopalnath … is documented in the spellbinding 'Kinsmen'" ("Jazz: A Passage to India," 3/2/09).