Jeff Lorber Fusion
Releases Step It Up on Concord Records

By the late 1970s, trailblazing keyboardist/composer/producer Jeff Lorber had become a prominent figure in the new movement known as jazz fusion - a marriage of traditional jazz with elements of rock, R&B, funk and other electrified sounds. Lorber and his band, the Jeff Lorber Fusion, first honed their craft in the Portland, Oregon, club scene and rapidly expanded their reach to a national and international audience via a combination of complex harmonies, compelling rhythms and unconventional time signatures. In subsequent years, Lorber dropped the term "fusion" from his billing as the movement evolved into what is currently known as contemporary jazz. Still, he continued to explore the innovative, improvisational potential of grafting other musical forms to the jazz idiom.

Nearly four decades after his earliest recordings, Lorber returns with Step It Up on Heads Up, a division of Concord Music Group. The fourth consecutive collaboration between the GRAMMY®-nominated keyboardist and GRAMMY®-winning bassist/composer/producer Jimmy Haslip since the two virtuosos reactivated the Jeff Lorber Fusion five years ago, Step It Up features 11 new Lorber compositions, several co-written with Haslip. The longtime colleagues also co-produced the recording.

Assisting the pair is a team of world-class musicians, including two former bandmates of Haslip's in the award-winning fusion band Yellowjackets: saxophonist Bob Mintzer and guitarist Robben Ford. Also lending a hand are drummers Ash Soan, Gary Novak and Vinnie Colaiuta; saxophonist Gary Meek and guitarists Michael Thompson and Paul Jackson Jr. David Mann provides horn arrangements and Lenny Castro percussion.

Stretching the envelope has been Lorber's strategy from the very beginning. Born in Philadelphia in 1952, Lorber began playing piano when he was just four years old. By his teen years, he had hooked up with several local R&B bands, but his tastes trended more toward jazz when he studied at Berklee College of Music.

After college, he relocated to Portland, Oregon, where he formed the Jeff Lorber Fusion. The group released their self-titled debut album in 1977, and quickly became one of the most popular acts in the jazz fusion scene, due in large part to relentless touring and a string of artistically daring and commercially successful recordings.

As on all past Jeff Lorber Fusion releases, dating back to its 1977 self-titled debut, Step It Up effortlessly mines and merges elements from multiple genres, including jazz, funk, rock and R&B. The original Jeff Lorber Fusion took an extended hiatus in the early '80s, reemerging and recharging in 2010 with an updated approach that incorporates contemporary rhythms, technology and instrumentation. Prior to Step It Up and Hacienda, Jeff Lorber Fusion released Now Is the Time (2010) and Galaxy (2012), both also via Heads Up. But as they began working on what ultimately became Step It Up, Lorber and Haslip realized they were heading to some new places in their music.

"I'm always writing new stuff and I got together with Jimmy to play him some of the music I was working on," says Lorber. "My compositions were a bit diverse and Jim suggested focusing more. We came up with the idea of '70s modal jazz." Inspired by the classic recordings of such greats as Freddie Hubbard, Herbie Hancock, Lee Morgan, Joe Henderson and Weather Report, Lorber and Haslip followed their collective muse, drawing conceptually from the influential output of those legends but filtering it all through their own sensibilities-several of the co-written tunes developed directly out of bass parts Haslip had created.

"We eventually put a list of original tunes together that we thought made a statement and had this modal thread running through it," says Haslip. "We also have a modern approach to this and we wanted to make sure that there would be strong elements of excitement and uplifting melodic motifs." (JazzCorner)