Lee Ritenour will release Live at Ronnie Scott’s on October 23, 2026, through The Players Club/Artone Label Group. Recorded during an eight-show March residency at London’s legendary jazz club, the album captures the Grammy-winning guitarist revisiting five decades of music with a young, road-tested band.

The first single is a newly arranged live version of “Is It You?,” Ritenour’s signature vocal hit from the 1981 album Rit. The original recording, featuring lead vocalist Eric Tagg, reached No. 15 on both Billboard’s Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts and No. 27 on the soul chart. Ritenour co-wrote the song with Tagg and Bill Champlin.

More than four decades later, Ritenour has not attempted to reproduce that studio recording note for note. He says the song has “definitely evolved” and acknowledges that it was never particularly easy for a band to perform live.

The new version takes on a gentler, slower groove, with Brazilian musicians Munir Hossn and Tatiana Parra sharing the vocals. Hossn also plays bass in Ritenour’s band.

Ritenour recalls sending the song to Hossn about a year before the recording. The younger musician did not know the early-’80s hit well and had one surprising reservation: although he had sung in Portuguese, French and Spanish, he had never performed a song in English.

Ritenour decided that neither singer needed to disguise their natural phrasing or accents. That decision helped give the familiar song its new personality, and he says he is “very happy” with the result.

A Band Built for the Moment

Along with Hossn and Parra, the musicians joining Ritenour on Live at Ronnie Scott’s are keyboardist Giorgi Mikadze, harmonica virtuoso Grégoire Maret, and drummer Wes Ritenour, Lee’s son.

According to Ritenour, the group’s recent history together was essential to the recording. Rather than assembling solely for the album, the musicians arrived in London after several years of consistent playing. That familiarity allowed the band to reshape well-known material instead of simply reproducing the recorded arrangements.

The residency consisted of eight performances with changing set lists—a suitably expansive approach for an artist whose catalog moves freely among jazz fusion, Brazilian music, pop, funk and straight-ahead jazz.

The resulting album includes staples such as “Captain Fingers,” “A Little Bumpin’,” “L.A. By Bike” and “The Village,” alongside Brazilian favorites including “Cravo e Canela,” “Meu Samba Torto” and Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Stone Flower.”

Back at Ronnie’s

Ritenour’s connection with Ronnie Scott’s reaches back to the 1970s, and his album announcement makes clear that the venue was more than a picturesque location for the recording.

“Ronnie Scott’s has always been a special place for me. The history, the room and the audience create an energy unlike anywhere else.”

That energy met a band prepared to take advantage of it.

“This band came into the shows ready to play, and I’m very proud of what we captured together,” Ritenour said.

The club’s musical openness also mirrors Ritenour’s own career.

“Every type of music has been played at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club since 1959,” Ritenour said. “That’s exactly what I love to do too.”

Since opening, Ronnie Scott’s has hosted defining jazz figures including Wes Montgomery, Miles Davis and Nina Simone while also welcoming rock, blues, soul and crossover artists. Ritenour’s own résumé has followed a similarly unrestricted path.

He emerged as an elite Los Angeles session guitarist in the late 1960s and went on to record with artists ranging from Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and B.B. King to Steely Dan, Quincy Jones and Pink Floyd. As a solo artist, he became one of jazz fusion’s most recognizable guitar voices, explored Brazilian music extensively and later co-founded Fourplay with Bob James, Nathan East and Harvey Mason.

On Live at Ronnie Scott’s, all of those musical identities meet in the same room. It’s not a retrospective museum piece, but as living material open to reinterpretation.

Live at Ronnie Scott’s Track List

1. Cravo e Canela
2. L.A. By Bike
3. For the Palms
4. Captain Fingers
5. A Little Bumpin’
6. Meu Samba Torto
7. Lay It Down
8. Is It You?
9. Waltz for Carmen
10. Stone Flower
11. Pearl
12. The Village

Live at Ronnie Scott’s will be available October 23 on CD, vinyl and digital platforms. “Is It You? (Live at Ronnie Scott’s)” is available now as the album’s first single.

More information: View the official album announcement and preorder information.

The post Lee Ritenour Announces Live at Ronnie Scott’s, Revisits “Is It You?” appeared first on ContemporaryJazz.com.

The original press release and album credits spell keyboardist Mark Portmann’s surname “Portman.” The correct spelling is Portmann.

For his fifth Rippingtons project, Russ Freeman decided to dispense with drum machines entirely and return to a more organic approach to the music. . “I wanted to have some of the excitement of the live band on this album,” says Russ. “I really tried to stay away from the technology thing and let the players stretch just a little bit more.”

So what you get on Curves Ahead is basically what you see when you catch the band on tour. Tony Morales slamming the backbeats, Jeff Kashiwa adding urgent sax lines, Mark Portman filling out the form on keyboards, Kim Stone laying down solid electric bass lines, Steve Reid coloring the groove with exotic percussion and Freeman leading the way on acoustic and electric guitars. And on two tracks, the buoyant title cut and the Latin romp, “Santa Fe Trail,” Freeman augments the core group with a four-piece horn section for a fuller, livelier sound.

“Arranging live horns was something new,” says the Rippingtons head man, “although in the past I have approximated horn arrangements on the synthesizer. And sometimes the synth horns will suffice. But I really felt on those tunes, particularly ‘Santa Fe Trail, we really needed some live guys playing horns. You get a whole different vibe in the studio that way and I think it comes across to the listener.”

That’s real acoustic piano you hear Mark Portman playing on his solos on “Aspen,” “Take Me With You” and “Morning Song.” And Dave Grusin‘s solo on “North Star” is performed on a beautiful Steinway Grand. No digital keyboards on these warm tracks. Says Freeman of Grusin’s guest appearance, “He’s a fabulous player. Not only is he a prolific composer, but when he sits down at the piano to play, it’s an absolutely killer performance.”

Stretching is the key to Curves Ahead. Guest Kirk Whalum gets to stretch on tenor sax alongside Grusin on “North Star” and on the upbeat vehicle “Miles Away.” And GRP artist Nelson Rangell is highlighted on three cuts, adding a touch of alto madness to the funky “Nature of The Beast,” serving up spicy flute licks on the salsafied “Santa Fe Trail,” and pulling out all the stops on piccolo on the album’s rousing closer, “Morning Song.” Says Freeman, “With each album I strive to write better music that’s more challenging. I try to develop harmonically as well as give the players a little more space on each album. And at this point, I’m feeling pretty confident about my composing. I work very hard at it. I try to think conceptually and thematically about each project.”

For Curves Ahead, Freeman was thinking specifically about Colorado. Because Russ fell in love with the place after several performances in the area, he has decided to make it his second home and is currently building a residence and recording studio there. As he says, “A lot of the songs on this album were inspired by the beauty of Colorado, particularly the title cut, ‘Snowbound’ and, obviously, ‘Aspen.’ There’s a definite vibe to Colorado, which is one thing those songs really evoke.” Also, Rippingtons bassist Kim Stone and guest artist reedman Nelson Rangell are both residents of the Rocky Mountain state.

The Rippingtons also venture beyond Colorado on Curves Ahead. “Santa Fe Trail” is a festive detour with a south of the border rhythm, and “Nature of The Beast” is a safari to Africa. “Miles Away” is a trip Eastward, influenced by the Philly soul sound. “That’s just another one of those groove tunes,” Russ says. “At least it started out that way, but it ended up being one of my favorite pieces on the record, maybe because of the great tenor solo that Kirk Whalum plays here.”

Freeman gets to stretch himself on acoustic guitar on “Snowbound,” which was a first-take solo. On the other end of the dynamic spectrum, he cranks out an aggressive electric guitar solo on the energetic “Nature Of The Beast,” which also showcases Steve Reid’s vast array of Afro-Cuban percussion instruments. Both tunes capture the spirit of a Rippingtons live gig. As Russ mentioned, “People seem to like the fact that we really dig in a little more on our instruments in concert, and I wanted that side of the band represented on this record.”

Curves Ahead is a long way away from the early days of The Rippingtons, when Freeman programmed the drum machine, played keyboard bass, put together synth sequences and basically ran a one-man MIDI operation. This latest project is the sound of a real band interacting in real time. As the multi-talented Rippingtons ringleader put it, “I find that at this point in my career I’m moving away from the high-tech machine-oriented sound. technology increases, I find myself going back to time-proven instruments like acoustic guitar and acoustic piano. And maybe that’s in retaliation for having used so many machines in the past. But there really is no sampler or digital keyboard that can truly capture the purity of those acoustic instruments. Because you can’t really get nuance out of a machine.” 

Freeman continues to compose on keyboard but seems to be phasing the guitar synthesizer out of his act. “I’m moving away from guitar synth, especially for the live show,” he says. “It’s a complex instrument to play. It’s so technical that it really demands your attention just to play it properly. But I want to concentrate more on my performance as a musician without having to worry about the technological side of things. So now I’m limiting the guitar synth to maybe two or three songs per set and focusing more on playing electric and acoustic guitar, which is really my forte.” 

Born on February 11, 1960, Russ Freeman grew up in Nashville, where he was exposed to the studio scene of Music City at an early age. “My Dad was good friends with John Pell, an excellent studio guitarist in Nashville. I remember John would come over to the house and bring other prominent studio musicians along, and they would set up and play right there in the house while my Dad would make recordings in a little studio he had set up.”

Russ took lessons with Pell and began playing in cover bands as a teenager. In 1978, at age 18, he left Nashville and relocated to Valencia, California, where he studied music at the California Institute of the Arts. He later studied film scoring at L.A. Valley College and at U.C.L.A. document his compositional ideas at the time. In 1985, he went into the studio to Nocturnal Playground, a virtual one-man band which had Freeman delving deeply into the MIDI process. under his name on the small, independent label, Brainchild. 

The following year Russ was approached by a Japanese label, Alfa, to cut a record, which became the Rippingtons’ debut effort. Moonlighting featured Freeman colleagues like David Benoit on keyboards and Kenny G and Brandon Fields on saxes. that project was just an exercise in production skills and writing “Basically, for me,” says Russ. “It was really a collection of songs I had written very quickly.”

Nevertheless, it was the birth of a band. Moonlighting was licensed in the States by Passport Jazz and rocketed to the top of Billboard’s jazz charts in the summer of 1987. Suddenly there was a big demand for this new fusion act, whose visual motif was a grinning “jazz cat” pictured on every album cover. (Artist Bill Mayer’s funky jazz cat is back on Curves Ahead, this time on skis.) 

The Rippingtons saw further success with 1988’s Kilimanjaro, 1989’s Tourist In Paradise and last year’s Welcome To The St. James’ Club. Their audience has been growing steadily since Moonlighting and now fans of the Ripps can savor the group’s most satisfying album yet, the live-sounding Curves Ahead. “This album definitely marks a new direction for the band,” says Freeman, “and right now it feels real good.” 

The post Rippingtons featuring Russ Freeman – Curves Ahead Press Release appeared first on ContemporaryJazz.com.

Creative director Kenneth “Kenny Beats” Blume joins forces with keyboardist Kiefer, bassist CARRTOONS (Ben Carr) and drummer Nate Smith to create something that feels completely at home in today’s musical landscape. These are artists equally comfortable with jazz improvisation, hip-hop, electronic music, modern production techniques and the collaborative culture that defines modern music. They aren’t interested in genre labels. They’re interested in making compelling music.

The quartet brings together four musicians from different musical worlds. Kenny Beats has become one of today’s most sought-after producers, helping shape recordings by Vince Staples, Denzel Curry, Rico Nasty, IDLES, Geese, and even Weezer, while building a massive following through his Twitch streams and YouTube collaborations with artists like Doja Cat, Thundercat, and Skrillex. Keyboardist Kiefer has established his own unmistakable sound by blending jazz, hip-hop and electronic textures, while also producing and collaborating with Terrace Martin and Anderson .Paak, including work on the GRAMMY-winning album Ventura.

On bass, CARRTOONS has become one of the most versatile musicians of his generation, moving effortlessly between jazz, funk, soul and hip-hop. His résumé includes work with legends such as George Clinton, Roy Ayers, Usher, and Jadakiss, while his solo recordings and inventive online performances have introduced his musicianship to an entirely new audience. Behind the drums is Nate Smith, one of the most influential drummers working today, whose extraordinary groove has made him a first-call collaborator for artists including Pat Metheny, Dave Holland, Jon Batiste, Brittany Howard, Michael Jackson, Childish Gambino, and Vulfpeck. His own projects have earned widespread acclaim, proving he’s every bit as visionary a bandleader as he is a sideman.

That’s what makes FATHERS such a notable release. Rather than looking backward, it embraces the idea that contemporary jazz continues to evolve, drawing inspiration from wherever creativity leads. The grooves are deep, the musicianship is exceptional, and the production feels fresh without sacrificing the human chemistry that great jazz demands.

I’ve often described contemporary jazz as an umbrella rather than a single style. Under that umbrella you’ll find fusion, hip-hop, electronic music, acid jazz, funk, soul, and plenty of room for experimentation. FATHERS doesn’t just fit under that umbrella—it reminds us that contemporary jazz can embrace new sounds without losing sight of what made us fall in love with the music in the first place.

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