Young Gun

By David E. Thigpen

/ Ideas come fast to Joshua Redman. On The Deserving Many, a song from the young tenor saxophonist's fine new album, Wish, he starts off with a few buoyant, tinkling notes, then suddenly scatters them into a jagged, descending riff, surging along it at breakneck speed. Then, quickly interweaving a flurry of growling notes with an exciting upper-octave peal, he is swept up by a new set of ideas that carry him back to his original melody.

Redman's fluency as a soloist is drawing comparisons to the young Sonny Rollins. Premature, of course, but it's been a long time since jazz produced a saxophonist with Redman's fearless improvisational skill and mature melodic sense. At 24, Redman already has plenty of name recognition. His father, Dewey Redman, made a reputation in the late 1960s as a saxophonist playing alongside Ornette Coleman. "But he wasn't a direct teacher or mentor," says Joshua, who, remarkably, taught himself by playing along with old records while growing up in Berkeley, California. Dewey moved to New York City before Joshua was born and never saw much of his son. Joshua's mother, Renee Shedroff, an amateur dancer, put food on the table by working as a librarian, and had time to encourage her son to experiment with guitar and piano.

Joshua picked up the sax at 10, but was less comfortable blowing notes than hitting the books. "I never wanted to be a professional musician," he says. "I saw how hard it was for my father to succeed." Intending to be a doctor or lawyer, he moved to Boston in 1987 after being accepted at Harvard. There, to break up the day-to-day Ivy League grind, he spent hours learning riffs from recordings of great saxophonists like Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, and gigged with friends around town. Two years ago, Yale Law School accepted him, but Redman put them off. By then he was too busy playing New York's tough club circuit, where he's been royally welcomed. Yale could be in for quite a wait.

With reporting by Patrick E. Cole/Los Angeles