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From Howard Mandel's liner notes: "Reut Regev is a boundary-crossing composer-trombonist born in Israel, living and active in New York City and its metroplex since 1998, noted for four previous albums with drummer and coleader Igal Foni (her husband), three featuring the quartet R*time, the last two co-starring electric guitarist Jean-Paul Bourelly, all loaded with spiky, funky, free-wheeling originals, performed with a bang. Meeting Hammond after a concert in Austria, Regev and Foni were delighted to discover the man whose oeuvre they had long admired was equally enamored of their sound and attitude. Correspondence led to It's Now: R*time Plays Doug Hammond, a unique collaboration setting the eminence's mature reflections on life, love, and music with the energy to render them timeless. Doug Hammond is a veteran American composer, drummer, percussionist, bandleader, singer-songwriter, essayist, and educator who is not nearly as well known in the U.S. as his music warrants. That may be largely because he's been based in Linz, Austria since 1989 as a professor at Bruckner University, making only periodic visits back to his native Detroit. Hammond's sixty-year career, begun with bluesman Earl Hooker and the R&B duo Sam & Dave, comprises more than a dozen albums under his own leadership starting with Reflections in the Sea of Nurnen from 1975, on which he played melodica and ARP synthesizer as well as drumming, crooning, and directing an octet. Independence, originality, fundamental tunefulness, and a spirit of inquiry characterize those Reflections as well as his subsequent releases, which include an anthology spotlighting hometown colleagues and first recordings of singer Angela Bofill (Doug Hammond Special), Steve Coleman's nascent M-Base (Spaces), through-compositions for flute, piano, and cello (Pictures and Hues), trios with trumpet and bass (May Be Blue and Singing Smiles), an ambitious, eponymous (Tentette), live solo 'griot' shows (Be You). He's had professional associations with Smokey Robinson, Sonny Rollins, and Charles Mingus (who recorded 'Moves,' heard here with lyrics, as an album title track), among others. Musicians abroad regard him as a beacon.
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