Celebratory Music

Mario Abney reaches on a human and intellectual level

- Geraldine Wyckoff

“In New Orleans, you can live after a jam session if you didn’t have a good night,” Mario Abney says with a laugh when comparing the jazz scene in his previous home base of Chicago with the Crescent City’s. The trumpeter and composer, who moved to New Orleans in 2008 and just released his distinctive sophomore disc, The Abney Effect Vol. 1—Instant Grits, brings a bit of both of these major jazz cities to his sound.

“The musicians in Chicago are pressing for a certain type of expressive aggression,” he continues. “In New Orleans music is part of the lifestyle. They both balance out. The level of music still rises up. Music works itself out that way.”

Abney, who began playing drums in church in his hometown of Harvey, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, embraces his musical influences and experiences and totally incorporates them on the album. He was encouraged in the music by his piano-playing uncle and was exposed to blues through his grandmother who dug the likes of legendary guitarist/ vocalist Howlin’ Wolf. When he was still in high school, his mother would take him to jam sessions at notorious Chicago clubs such as Fred Anderson’s Velvet Lounge. He got hip to New Orleans brass band music when the Hot 8 played a festival in Ohio where the trumpeter attended college and then taught school.