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Marcus Miller: Renaissance
This is bass-guitar star Marcus Miller's UK-tour repertoire of last month, plus a few bonuses, including the finely spun vocals of young New Yorker Gretchen Parlato and the rasping ones of Dr John on two tracks. For jazz-funk fans, it's paradise – Miller's arrangements have the clamouring horn parts, snappy basslines, raw guitar fills and whipcrack backbeats of this style meshing like a racing engine, and, of course, there are plenty of jawdropping bass solos. But the exhilaratingly funky Detroit, the lyrical (and Tutu/Amandla-related) Redemption, or the Headhunters-like Slippin' into Darkness confirm Miller's mastery of his particular world. Solos from Lincoln Centre trumpeter Sean Jones and excellent regular saxophonist Alex Han spark fireworks, sly quotes from Dizzy Gillespie and Bob Marley classics add spice, and there's a poetic solo-bass finale on I'll Be There.