Kendrick Scott / Reuben Rogers / Walter Smith III - Corridors

Third Blue Note album by drummer and composer Kendrick Scott

The anticipated follow-up to A Wall Becomes a Bridge

Drummer and composer Kendrick Scott presents Corridors, his first compositional treatment of trio context — saxophone, bass and drums — and third album for Blue Note Records. The anticipated follow-up to A Wall Becomes A Bridge, Scott's much-lauded 2019 release with his band Oracle, Corridors unveils an exposed rumination from the Houston-born artist and his acclaimed collaborators: saxophonist Walter Smith III and bassist Reuben Rogers.

"I often write about something that I'm going through," says Scott, "but for this record I wanted to zoom out from my perspective and instead, try to deal with everyone's. The pandemic forced everyone to deal with the shadows they had been running from."

Originally commissioned by Rio Sakairi for The Jazz Gallery's 2020 Artist Fellowship Series, Corridors features eight original compositions and one new arrangement of a beloved tune from the Bobby Hutcherson canon. Born during lockdown, the record focuses on posing outward questions instead of inward contemplation. "I was thinking to myself, ‘How has life changed for everyone?'" says Scott, who began the writing process with a deceptively benign inquiry: What are people doing inside their homes?"

From that question, the theme of corridors came to me," he says, noting that the metaphor was in part inspired by a long corridor in his New York City apartment. "When you think of corridors, it really implies movement, going from one place to the next. But yet now everyone is stagnated inside them."