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On his right arm, trumpeter Brandon Woody has a tattoo of one of the benches found around Baltimore. On the bench a slogan reads “The greatest city in America” – just as it did on the thousands of benches painted for an early 2000s campaign by mayor Martin O’Malley.
The trumpeter’s debut album, For The Love Of It All, released in May, is another kind of love letter to the city. Its six tracks are suffused with the swing and spirituality that Woody associates with Baltimore’s raw, energetic sound. “It’s such a renaissance right now here, man,” he says. “What I was trying to channel in [For The Love Of It All] was just the beauty of the city.”
Woody, 27, grew up in Baltimore. When trumpet and saxophone were offered to him aged seven at the city’s Leith Walk Elementary/Middle School, he chose the former because it looked easier. After studying jazz performance at the Brubeck Institute in California, he attended the Manhattan School of Music in New York. But when his gigging started to overtake his studies, he moved home. “I wear my hometown on my sleeves. It’s a part of me,” Woody says.
Baltimore has raised many jazz musicians over the decades: he cites trumpeter Theljon Allen, saxophonists Tim Green and Gary Thomas, multi-instrumentalist Craig Alston, bassist Gary Grainger and vibraphonist Warren Wolf as particular inspirations. “Cats here can swing their asses off,” he says of their groove-heavy playing style. “If any of my OGs in Baltimore call me for a gig, it could pay zero dollars – I’m there.” When we speak, he is recovering from BaltimoreAFRAM, a festival of African-American culture in the city.
Woody’s own band Upendo (named after the Swahili word for love) has been together for eight years, but this is the first record to emerge from the project. Trumpet is the focal point (only the opening track features vocals), held aloft by cascading drum, bass and piano lines. The instruments intersect and interact as though themselves purposeful city-dwellers; the musical conversations that result burst with life, determination and an excited fear of the unknown – a sound, in short, unique to Baltimore. “We make the sound for ourselves,” he says. “Because we know that there’s not a lot of other people outside of the city making music for us.”
Brandon Woody’s debut album, For The Love Of It All, is out on Blue Note
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