Award-winning alto-saxophonist Patrick Cornelius has earned his place in New York’s contemporary jazz scene via a combination of hard work and easy expression. The narrative thread spanning his three albums - Lucid Dream (2006), Fierce (2010), and his latest, the meditative and deeply personal Maybe Steps - is a search to express real-world experiences and musings through the language of jazz, albeit with casualness and humor.
As a San Antonio, Texas youngster, Cornelius was instructed by Harry Hassell and San Antonio's first-call tenor-saxophonist Morgan King. In high school, he first met future collaborators Kendrick Scott and Mike Moreno once a year when they participated in Texas' All State Jazz Band, and by his senior year, Patrick was already turning heads for his uncommon command of the alto.
After earning his degree at Berklee College of Music, he moved to New York City and enrolled in the Master's degree program at The Manhattan School of Music, playing in an ensemble with Berklee classmate Walter Smith III, trumpet firebrand Ambrose Akinmusire, and future band-mate Gerald Clayton.
The American Society of Composers and Performers awarded Cornelius their Young Jazz Composer Award three years in a row, inspiring him to release his first album of largely original material, Lucid Dream, in 2006. The album featured a cast of rising stars, including Kendrick Scott on drums, the inimitable Aaron Parks on piano, Sean Conly on bass and Nick Vayenas on trombone, along with a cameo turn by vocalist Gretchen Parlato. Lucid Dream's tunes are episodic and thoughtful, reflecting Patrick's philosophy that "the improvisation should be in complement to the tune, and should be in character with the vibe and message of the song." It is a true ensemble record, with Parks, Cornelius and Scott sharing the improvisational spotlight equally.
Cornelius' second album Fierce (Whirlwind, 2010), a trio setting as spare as Lucid Dream's quintet was lush, is a departure as well from his usual cohort of collaborators. The record features London-based Michael Janisch (with whom Patrick founded The TransAtlantic Collective, an international collaborative ensemble) on the bass and Jonathan Blake on the drums, with long-time associates Nick Vayenas and Mark Small also contributing to the program. Fierce is in every way an arrival statement, with Cornelius fully in his element, meandering easily through the record's spartan post-bop songbook. "Fierce was an attempt to write music that was fun and playful, light-hearted," recalls Patrick.
The latest release from Cornelius, Maybe Steps (Posi-Tone, 2011), which combines old and new works into a deeply introspective tone poem, is by far his most ambitious. The quintet setting is back, as is Kendrick Scott on drums, joined on this outing by Peter Slavov on bass, both Berklee classmates of Cornelius'. Gerald Clayton is on piano, and guitarist Miles Okazaki, whom Cornelius met during post-graduate studies at Juilliard, is on guitar.
Nine of Maybe Steps' eleven tunes are originals (Kurt Weil/George Gershwin and George Shearing penned the remaining two) and many are programmatic, representing life events from the birth of Cornelius' daughter to the day he proposed marriage to his wife. Maybe Steps’ willingness to show vulnerability is its greatest strength.
But the defining theme of Cornelius' career is not how he felt facing the various "big decisions" in his life, but that he did face them. His albums showcase the pursuit of an individual voice by any means necessary and a keen understanding of what makes him unique.
Cornelius, whose bands have in recent years been featured at venues such as Ronnie Scott's, London Jazz Festival, and Pizza Express in London, and The Blue Note, The Rubin Museum, The Jazz Gallery, Smalls, and The Bar Next Door in New York, continues to be one of New York's most prolific and most in-demand young jazz musicians.
