Rick Roe, Wake Up Call: The Music of Gregg Hill Review

Wake Up Call: The Music of Gregg Hill: Rick Roe Wakes the Music Up

By Nolan DeBuke

From the first bars of Wake Up Call: The Music of Gregg Hill, it’s clear that pianist Rick Roe is guiding this project from the inside out. Roe’s presence is felt as a soloist and as an arranger-leader, shaping how the music unfolds and converses. The compositions belong entirely to Gregg Hill, but the lived experience of the album is filtered through Roe’s rhythmic intelligence and his trust in a Detroit-rooted quartet that values listening as much as execution.

Hill’s writing offers varied forms, sly harmonic turns, and hard-bop DNA with modern inflection as raw material. Roe’s arrangements animate that material, allowing structure and feel to evolve through ensemble interaction. Marcus Elliot on tenor and soprano saxophone, Robert Hurst on bass, and Nate Winn on drums complete a group that treats groove as shared property and momentum as something collectively earned.

Across Detroit’s musical lineage, human connection emerges as a throughline that transcends genre or era. From Kenny Burrell, Ron Carter, Paul Chambers, and the Jones family to Stevie Wonder and the Motown artists, the common ground isn’t stylistic similarity so much as presence. Their music invites the listener inward, shaped by deep listening, individual voice, and a commitment to community over display.

Each of these artists carries a distinct sonic fingerprint, immediately recognizable, yet their music remains open and accessible. What’s written or conceived is only the starting point; meaning arrives through feel, interaction, and trust among musicians. That same ethic defines Wake Up Call: The Music of Gregg Hill. Hill’s compositions provide the voice, while Roe and his Detroit-rooted quartet shape the experience through a shared commitment to listening as much as execution. The result is music that communicates first, inviting the listener into a space where individuality and collective momentum move together.

Set into a relaxed medium swing, “Inside Straight” establishes the album’s conversational ethic immediately. The tune moves with an easygoing hard-bop confidence, but what stands out is how naturally the band passes the narrative from voice to voice. Elliot steps in first, his solo melodic and rooted in the tradition, yet edged with contemporary phrasing. Roe follows with a solo that feels playful in rhythm and clear in development, with his elegant eighth-note pulse never rushing, always inviting.

Hurst’s bass solo deepens the exchange, his fluid lines and woody resonance grounding the track without weighing it down. Winn, throughout, is the constant provider of feel and accent, shaping the pocket while staying alert to every turn in the conversation. Even when one voice leads, the others remain actively engaged, listening and responding. The trading of fours with Winn before the final melody is a final confirmation that this music lives in dialogue. Composition and arrangement meet the moment through collective awareness.

The title track, “Wake Up Call,” reveals Roe’s arranging hand with Hill’s creative writing vividly. A staccato-themed introduction and melody lock into a funky modern jazz groove, immediately shifting the album’s energy. On paper, Hill’s composition already carries rhythmic intent, but the ensemble’s performance and interaction sharpen the contrast as short, percussive motifs give way to longer, flowing lines, creating a balance that keeps the music in motion.

As Elliot solos, the rhythm section begins with simple, repeated ideas, then gradually opens the groove as his lines expand. The story unfolds organically, each development prompted by the last. Roe’s own solo continues that narrative thread with blues-tinged phrases dancing across the keyboard, buoyed by his unmistakable rhythmic feel. What resonates most is how the arrangement allows the ensemble to take cues from the composition without being confined by it. Hill’s ideas are honored, then animated, turning written structure into jazz momentum.

“Hyperbarity” shifts the album’s center of gravity through Hill’s composition. Roe opens with moody, exotically colored chords, while Winn’s drumming paints around the theme rather than beneath it. A modal atmosphere emerges, soon giving way to a riff-based figure that flows into a cadential release before returning to the opening color. The music moves, by design and through performance.

Elliot’s soprano saxophone solo bridges these contrasting worlds with long, fluid lines, clarifying direction without flattening the mood. Hill’s composition provides just enough structure to keep the turns surprising, while Roe’s solo explores both sections through rhythm and intervallic choice. His chords and single-note lines highlight the tension between harmonic movement and modal mood, distributing the music’s emotional and rhythmic weight across the ensemble rather than letting it settle in one place.

Across the album, Roe’s influence is felt less as overt direction than as rhythmic guidance, an intelligence that shapes how the ensemble listens, responds, and develops form in real time. Wake Up Call: The Music of Gregg Hill succeeds because it treats composition, arrangement, and performance as equal partners. Hill’s writing sparks the conversation, Roe’s arrangements give it room to move, and the quartet brings it fully to life. In that sense, the album’s title feels like the perfect description. For listeners attuned to groove and ensemble chemistry, this collective momentum arrives right on time.