For those unaware, the brand new album A New Beat, by internationally lauded drummer and bandleader Ulysses Owens Jr. and his exciting outfit of promising rising talent, Generation Y, is now out and ready for consumption!

Praised by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, DownBeat and more for his impactful work as a bandleader and recognized as a vital force with legends such as Kurt Elling, Wynton Marsalis and Christian McBride, GRAMMY-Award winning Owens Jr.’s rise from “young lion” to seasoned mentor has been undeniably swift.

As his career as a world-class musician has blossomed mightily, so has his impact in music education, marked by a professorship at The Juilliard School, now in its seventh year. Informed by his experience as an educator, and by the profound legacy of mentorship enacted by great bandleaders Art Blakey and Betty Carter, Owens Jr. scouts the next generation of jazz movers and shakers in an ensemble he calls Generation Y.

Four years after its formation, Owens Jr. took the group – in its multiple iterations – into the studio. The end result is A New Beat – a unique musical juxtaposition that stands both as a tribute to the legacies and traditions of his mentors, and an homage to the unbridled potential of the future.

1. Sticks (7:36)
2. Better Days (7:15)
3. London Towne (7:06)
4. Until I See You Again
5. Soulful (8:13)
6. Heart Full of Rhythm (5:19)
7. Bird Lives (live) (8:32)
8. Helen’s Song (5:11)

This expertly manicured new recording opens on the powerfully self-aware beauty Sticks (a Cannonball Adderley/Nat Adderley track) and the stridently-hued Better Days (a composition by Generation Y band member and trumpeter Anthony Hervey) and then we get the rhythmically-emotive London Towne (an original composition by Benny Benack III) and the luxuriant, ornately sculpted, pianist Luther Allison cut Until I See You Again.

Along next is the rather aptly-named, and delightfully grooved also Soulful (itself a tribute to Roy Hargrove) and that is in turn backed by the Gospel-imbibed Heart Full of Rhythm (co-written by Horace Gerlach and Louis Armstrong), the album rounding out on the energetically fervent the Jackie McLean composition Bird Lives (live), closing on the sheer dulcet beauty found within the simply glorious Helen’s Song (George Cables).

Official Purchase Link