Globetrotting guitarist Reza
Khan dropped his fifth album, “Next Train Home,” on Friday. The twelve songs
that he wrote and produced for the collection symbolize the discovery of his
musical home, a multi-genre and multicultural mélange of straight-ahead and
contemporary jazz enriched with world music and Brazilian jazz nuances. The
album has already climbed into the top 100 on the Jazz Week chart based on
radio spins from jazz radio stations while the smooth/contemporary jazz single,
“Drop of Faith,” featuring guitarist Nils, has earned most added honors on the
Billboard chart.
The Bangladesh-born Khan “daylights” as a program manager
for the United Nations, playing a role in peace and conflict operations
throughout Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He composed the album during a
six-week trek abroad, a trip that included a hospitalization and a forced
recovery period after collapsing and suffering from severe dehydration. While
traveling, Khan totes in his backpack a folding guitar, a primitive keyboard
and a laptop that were used to write and record the material. When he returned
to his New York City home, he fully fleshed out his concepts and ideas in the
studio where he was joined by an array of first-call session players and
prominent soloists. In addition to Nils, Khan called upon saxophonists Jeff
Kashiwa and Andy Snitzer, keyboardist Philippe Saisse, pianist Matt King, bassist
Mark Egan, horn man David Mann (sax and flute), percussionist Gumbi Ortiz, and
drummers Mauricio Zottarelli and Graham Hawthorne to meticulously craft the
lush tracks heard on “Next Train Home.” At the core is Khan’s deft nylon and
electric guitars plucking lofty melodic statements and strumming harmonic
passages with verve. When soloing, he astutely bends notes, indulging his
imaginative wanderlust and impulse to riff evocative etchings.
While Khan gears up for an album release concert at the City
Winery in New York City on May 9, he’s begun making the media rounds in support
of “Next Train Home.” Recently he was interviewed on internet radio show Hybrid
Jazz and for the summer issue of national jazz magazine Jazziz.
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