Gary Bartz: NTU Troop Revisited

Among the most influential living alto saxophonists and composers, 2024 NEA Jazz Master Gary Bartz brings a fresh perspective to his landmark NTU Troop music of 1970s on this special night, joined by Oakland-born trumpet great Ambrose Akinmusire.

A preternaturally gifted wind player, the Baltimore-born Bartz paid his early dues as part of Charles Mingus’ Jazz Workshop, moving from strength to strength in work with Max Roach and McCoy Tyner before joining Art Blakey’s vaunted talent incubator, the Jazz Messengers. Bartz was a natural choice to help Miles Davis usher in his expansive electric jazz era in the early 1970s while assembling his own politically charged NTU Troop — a liquid ensemble formed to explore Black Consciousness, blending roiling post-bop and deep layers of spiritual funk.

The band’s studio debut, Harlem Bush Music, is a defiant statement of purpose released in two volumes in 1970 and 1971, followed by a procession of mind and body movers including Juju Street Songs, Follow the Medicine Man, I’ve Known Rivers and Other Bodies and Singerella: A Ghetto Fairly Tale.

At 83, Bartz is a respected elder statesman whose fiery approach and adventurous nature remains undiminished after 30 albums and a lifetime of innovation.