An alumnus of the Grammy Museum’s Music Revolution Project and the University of Missouri Kansas City Conservatory of Music (where he majored in Jazz Studies), Blair Bryant has evolved over the past few years from contemporary jazz reviewers’ prediction that he would be “The Next” to the breakthrough reality that he’s “The Now.”
When you hear his otherworldly, ultra-melodic bass jamming and popping on a snappy, brassy and ultra-infectious funk jam like his latest, playfully titled single “Chocolate for Breakfast,” you’ll know urban jazz sax great Najee – with whom Bryant has toured extensively – wasn’t overhyping when he called him a “contemporary Stanley Clarke” and others have called him a genius, a phenom and a musical prodigy with a “genius gift from God.”
He creates all this funkified transcendence with an arsenal that includes numerous basses (upright double, electronic fretless, 7 string electric Conklin), as well as acoustic and electric guitar, drums, piano, organ, Fender Rhodes, vibraphone and many other instruments.
Bryant’s 2018 album Cerulean Blue put him on the map with a chart hit and SiriusXM Watercolors airplay and he’s been rolling like crazy ever since. “Chocolate for Breakfast” is bubbly, uplifting horn drenched funk at its most transcendent, an uplifting journey with tons of swirling, mood lifting sonic energy simmering around that ever-present trademark punchy, plucky bass melody.