Trumpeter Roy Hargrove was born in Waco, TX on October 16, 1969. Inspired by the gospel music he heard in church on Sundays and the R&B and funk music that played on the radio, Roy began learning the trumpet in the fourth grade. By junior high school, he was playing at an advanced level of proficiency.  At 16, he was studying music at Dallas's prestigious Booker T. Washington School for the Visual and Performing Arts.

 Midway through his junior year, Roy was "discovered" by Wynton Marsalis, who was conducting a jazz clinic at the school. Impressed, Marsalis invited Roy to sit in with his band at Ft. Worth's Caravan of Dreams Performing Arts Center. Subsequently, Hargrove was able to return to the venue over a period of the next three months, sitting in with Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard and Bobby Hutcherson. Word of Roy's talent reached Paul Ackett, founder and Director of The North Sea Jazz Festival who arranged for him to perform there that summer. This lead to a month long European Tour.

Hargrove spent one year (1988-1989) studying at...

Trumpeter Roy Hargrove was born in Waco, TX on October 16, 1969. Inspired by the gospel music he heard in church on Sundays and the R&B and funk music that played on the radio, Roy began learning the trumpet in the fourth grade. By junior high school, he was playing at an advanced level of proficiency.  At 16, he was studying music at Dallas's prestigious Booker T. Washington School for the Visual and Performing Arts.

 Midway through his junior year, Roy was "discovered" by Wynton Marsalis, who was conducting a jazz clinic at the school. Impressed, Marsalis invited Roy to sit in with his band at Ft. Worth's Caravan of Dreams Performing Arts Center. Subsequently, Hargrove was able to return to the venue over a period of the next three months, sitting in with Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard and Bobby Hutcherson. Word of Roy's talent reached Paul Ackett, founder and Director of The North Sea Jazz Festival who arranged for him to perform there that summer. This lead to a month long European Tour.

Hargrove spent one year (1988-1989) studying at Boston's Berklee School of Music, but could more often be found in NYC jam sessions, which resulted in his transferring to New York's New School. His first recording in NYC was with the saxophonist Bobby Watson followed shortly by a session with the up-and-comers super group, Superblue featuring Watson, Mulgrew Miller and  Kenny Washington.  In 1990, he released his solo debut, Diamond in the Rough, on the Novus/RCA label, for which he would record a total of four albums that document his incubational growth as a "young lion" to watch. Hargrove made his Verve Records debut in 1994 on With the Tenors of Our Time, showcasing him with stellar sax men Joe Henderson, Stanley Turrentine, Johnny Griffin, Joshua Redman and Branford Marsalis. Every album Roy has released on Verve has been different from the one preceding it. And the same can be said of the array of talents who have invited him to grace the stage and/or their recordings - from jazz legends Sonny Rollins and Jackie McLean to song stylists Natalie Cole, Diana Krall and Abbey Lincoln. From pop veterans Diana Ross, Steve Tyrell and Kenny Rankin to younger stars John Mayer and Rhian Benson to the crème de la crème of jazz divas: Carmen McRae and the late, great Shirley Horn. Hargrove was also commissioned by the Lincoln Jazz Center to compose the piece "The Love Suite: In Mahogany," which was performed in 1993. He is also a superstar of the international touring scene with his quintet, RH Factor and as a soloist.

In 2005, he was a featured guest with Slide Hampton and the Dizzy Gillespie All Star Band in bi-coastal tributes to James Moody in honor of the saxophonists 80th birthday at Disney Hall in Los Angeles, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and approximately 25 other concerts around the globe.  As RH Factor attests, Roy is also a product of the hip hop generation. He can be heard on a cover of rapper Method Man's "All I Need" the album-opening track of producer Tony Joseph's 2005 Verve project Def Jazz (instrumental interpretations of rap classics from the Def Jam label).

He has further ventured into the black pop mainstream as a collaborator with edgy soul star D'Angelo  and guest appearances on albums by neo soul priestess Erykah Badu, thought-provoking rapper Common, and English acid jazz DJ/producer Gilles Peterson.

Touching back on the statement Roy made at the outset about the state of jazz and jazz audiences today, the music world would be hard pressed to find another ambassador capable of traversing the worlds of straight ahead swingin' and the funky underground better than Brother Hargrove. The RH Factor's Distractions and The Roy Hargrove Quintet's Nothing Serious stand as the actual proof.

At 38, trumpeter Roy Hargrove has firmly established himself as among the premier players in jazz and beyond. Ever-stretching into more challenging and colorful ways to flex his musical chops, Hargrove has left indelible imprints in a vast array of artful settings. He’s now made his debut on Emarcy with his latest acoustic jazz album Earfood. Yet during his tenure on the Verve label, he recorded an album with a hand-picked collection of the world's greatest tenor saxophonists (With the Tenors of Our Time), an album of standards with strings (Moment to Moment) and, in 2003, introduced his own hip hop/jazz collective The RH Factor with the groundbreaking LP Hard Groove (swiftly followed by the limited edition EP, Strength). Hargrove also won Grammy Awards for two vastly different projects. In 1997, Roy's Cuban-based band Crisol (including piano legend Jesus "Chucho" Valdes and wonder drummer Horatio "El Negro" Hernandez) won the Best Latin Jazz Performance Grammy for the album Habana. And in 2002, Hargrove, Herbie Hancock and Michael Brecker won Best Instrumental Jazz Album, Individual or Group, for their three-way collaboration Directions in Music.

In 2006 Hargrove brought together his two musical worlds closer together with the simultaneous release of Distractions and Nothing Serious - all new recordings by both of Roy Hargrove's touring ensembles. Distractions featured the contemporary funk/jazz sounds of The RH Factor.  Nothing Serious features straight ahead jazz by The Roy Hargrove Quintet with special guest Slide Hampton on trombone. "I've been doing more touring with RH Factor than my quintet lately," Hargrove muses. "People are turning a deaf ear to jazz. Some of that is the fault of jazz musicians trying too hard to appear to be cerebral. They aren't having fun playing the music and that's why people aren't coming to hear it live anymore.

Roy Hargrove previous Quintet disc Nothing Serious moved from Roy's breathtaking and sensual Flugelhorn ballad "Trust" and the enveloping warmth of "The Gift" to a fierce waltz time swinger "Salima's Dance" (from the pen of pianist Ronnie Matthews), a relentlessly winding study in melody from bassist D'Wayne Burno evocatively titled "Devil Eyes," and a whirl through the magical changes of Branislau Kaper's "Invitation," the set's sole jazz standard. Rounding out the stellar quintet are alto saxophonist Justin Robinson (who also plays some lovely flute on "Trust") and drummer Willie Jones III, the latter of whom has been playing in Hargrove's groups for eight years. As a whole, this incarnation of the Roy Hargrove Quintet has been playing together for four years, the tightness of which is evident throughout the disc. The band perfected most of the material on the road before the recording.

One glowing exception is the lushly swingin' "A Day in Vienna," contributed by special guest Slide Hampton, a living giant of jazz. Roy cut his teeth with Hampton's band in a trumpet section that included greats Jon Faddis and Claudio Roditi (documented on the Telarc Records CD Dedicated to Diz, a Slide Hampton & The Jazz Masters set from `93 recorded live at the Village Vanguard). "Slide has been a big part of my education. I can't tell you know much playing charts from the original Dizzy Big Band book with that group helped me. The way that Slide arranges and voices, he knows how to take a small group of horns and make it sound like an orchestra." Listen to Roy's own "Trust" to hear that he learned Slide's lessons well. Thus ‘Earfood’ presents a richly coloured snapshot of an artist reaching his prime, a young player once dubbed ubiquitously as the ‘Young Lion’, is now head of The Jazz Pride. He’s nothing left to prove as his current trumpet sound reveals in his total command of tone that’s inflected with subtle emotions and, when needed, pure hard bop power. Yet as he reveals in his liner notes, he now just wants to play tuneful, melodic music, that reaches out to an audience – wherever they are coming from.

Roy explains his latest musical mood in his own words; “This recording was made to bring sonic pleasure to the listener. It is my working quintet, playing a repertoire consisting of songs we play live while on tour, mixed in with a few new originals. Simple melodies moving around luscious chords, allow us to capture the attention, and give a feeling of transcendence. The cohesive sound of the group is a result of our constant touring, and getting to know one another, on and off of the bandstand. These are key elements in developing a tight sound, and in less time wasted in the studio. My goal in this project is to have a recording that is steeped in tradition and sophistication, while maintaining a sense of melodic simplicity.”

(Shrink Biography)