With a UK release now confirmed for May although it’s released in the States this week Kendrick Scott and his band Oracle’s album Conviction, the drummer’s 11-track debut for Concord, follows on from the huge promise shown by The Source, Scott’s debut as a leader, released six years ago. But just in the autumn at Ronnie Scott’s club in London Scott, no stranger to homegrown audiences, was on storming form as the band shot into Eddie Cleanhead Vinson’s ‘Four’ with some fleetness of foot just days after President Obama was re-elected, the choice of tune title appropriate. Scott was Blakey-fast and driving hard, alongside young bass sensation Joshua “Smiler” Crumbly who himself was moving like a young Jimmy Blanton to his side. “Stoked” as he had put it before the gig and clearly up for it Scott displayed great mallet touch as the set developed, and he found the sweet part of the cymbal time and again.

Tracks on Conviction are Broadcast’s ‘Pendulum’; Sufjan Stevens’ ‘Too Much’ with a vocal by Alan Hampton who Glasper fans would have witnessed live guesting at the iTunes fest last year; Herbie Hancock’s ‘I Have a Dream’; solo bass track ‘We Shall By Any Means’; ‘Liberty or Death’; ‘Cycling Through Reality’; ‘Conviction’; ‘Apollo’; ‘Serenity’; ‘Be Water’ with a unusal monologue by that well known jazzer, martial arts master Bruce Lee; and solo piano piece ‘Memory of Enchantment’.

Scott, best known for his work in Terence Blanchard’s band, is joined in Oracle by a mostly new line-up with saxophonist and bass clarinettist John Ellis, guitarist Mike Moreno (the only band member here featured on The Source), hotshot pianist the still developing Taylor Eigsti, and bassist Joe Sanders, with Alan Hampton on two tracks in all. Co-produced by The Experiment’s Derrick Hodge, expected himself to debut for Blue Note records later this year, Hodge also wrote the title track ‘Conviction’. Scott, who’s 32 and comes from Houston where he attended the famed High School for the Performing and Visual Arts where both Robert Glasper and Jason Moran studied, and later Berklee in Boston, the drummer appeared on Terence Blanchard’s albums A Tale of God’s Will, and Flow, on which Scott’s tune ‘The Source’ features Herbie Hancock, who picked up a Grammy nomination for his solo. The song then gave its name to Scott’s own first album as a leader. New York-based for approaching a decade Scott besides Blanchard has also toured heavily with Herbie, John Scofield, and Wayne Shorter, as well as Pat Metheny and Christian McBride. Look out for an early review of Conviction in these pages soon. MB

Kendrick Scott above