Old Knew

Old Knew is Gregory Groover, Jr's follow-up to his 2024 Criss Cross debut, Lovabye, on which - in the exalted company of Joel Ross, Aaron Parks, Vicente Archer and Marcus Gilmore - he projected his soulful, reflective tenor saxophone voice throughout an 11-track recital of, as Groover puts it, original "love songs and songs of people I love". On Old Knew, Groover, 32, addresses similarly inspired repertoire from a different angle, eliciting collective kineticism and creative spirit from a pan-generational A-list quintet, comprising Ross, the nonpareil 30-year-old vibraphonist; Paul Cornish, the 20-something pianist; and the glorious drummer Kendrick Scott and bass provocateur Harish Raghavan, both 40-something. The first three are Blue Note label-mates of Groover's producer, the eminent saxophonist Walter Smith, III, once the leader's hero, now his fellow faculty member at Berklee College of Music, where Groover serves as Assistant Chair of the Ensemble Department and, for much of the 2024-25 academic year, Interim Director of Danilo Perez's Global Jazz Institute.