Michael Waldrop - Time Frames (2021)

While featuring the marimba as a melodic instrument throughout "Time Frames," percussionist Michael Waldrop fully celebrates its origins as an African percussion instrument, creating provocative rhythmic undercurrents to offset his soaring melodies and improvisations. Surrounding himself with other renowned and musically diverse percussionists Gordon Stout, Brad Dutz, Jose Rossy and Marko Djordjevic, the heightened rhythmic colorings propel Waldrop's five original compositions. Jack Cooper's expansive "Three Mediterranean Views" gives space to pianist Steve Snyder, while two drumsets provide the hurricane power behind "Katrina’s Path." Famed marimbist Gordon Stout's "Incoming" is a virtuosic study for himself on marimba and Waldrop on drumset. Stylistically vast—from delicate, classical chamber music, to intricate, groove-laden marimba and percussion atmospheres, or ferocious waves of drums—"Time Frames" retains a musical center, one that revels in the deep, fundamental human connection to rhythm.