{"id":11321,"date":"2025-09-21T21:56:01","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T02:56:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/?p=11321"},"modified":"2025-09-21T22:14:35","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T03:14:35","slug":"review-bartz-damage-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/review-bartz-damage-control\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Gary Bartz\u2019s \u2018The Eternal Tenure of Sound: Damage Control\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of our few links to bands of Miles, McCoy Tyner, Pharaoh Sanders, Lee Morgan, and Roy Hargrove, NEA Jazz Master and soon-to-be-eighty-five-year-old Gary Bartz has earned the right to do whatever he pleases. Damage Control<\/em> (OYO, 2025) is the first installment in The Eternal Tenure of Sound<\/em> trilogy, self-funded by Bartz and produced by longtime collaborator and godson, Om\u2019mas Keith. Through Keith, Bartz was able to recruit a stunning cast of musicians, including Kassa Overall<\/a>, Brandee Younger<\/a>, Theo Croker, Kamasi Washington, Terrace Martin, Nile Rodgers, and Cory Henry, among them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Damage Control<\/em>, Bartz\u2019s first album as a leader in twelve years, is not at all what most of us expected. To this listener, upon first listening and without any guiding posts, the record sounds like Grover Washington Jr. playing alto saxophone. That\u2019s because Bartz gravitates to tunes he often sings in the shower, those with a strong R&B bent, rendered by artists such as Curtis Mayfield, Anita Baker, Patti LaBelle, Maurice White, and DeBarge, among others. Given that Bartz grew up in Baltimore, where a stew of jazz, soul, and R&B was prominent, he is not the first to take this route. Fellow Baltimorian Warren Wolf also made an R&B album, Reincarnation<\/em> (Mack Avenue, 2020). Charm City\u2019s emerging trumpeter Brandon Woody\u2019s Blue Note debut, For the Love of it All<\/em> (Blue Note, 2025), also has distinct streaks of R&B and soul, though neither as overt as on Damage Control<\/em>. Bartz, who describes his genre-agnostic approach, \u201cHad they been the same age and in the same city at the same time, John Coltrane could have gone to school and graduated with James Brown.\u201d In fact, Coltrane is forever in Bartz\u2019s mind. He calls this his \u201cBallads\u201d album. In another sense, the R&B strains are not that far removed from Bartz\u2019s 2021 collaboration with Jazz Is Dead [Gary Bartz JID006<\/em> (Jazz is Dead, 2021)]. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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