2000 · Album
Aria
Recorded Unknown—specific session dates not documented · Sony Classical · Produced by Not specified in available sources
Opera Through a Saxophonist's Heart
Not his most inventive work, but full of the pure heart that defined everything he touched.
Aria arrived in 2000 as Grover Washington Jr.'s final statement, a posthumous collection that found him reaching toward something different late in his career. The album pairs Washington's soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones with the lush arrangements of the Orchestra of St. Lukes, a chamber ensemble known for its flexibility across genres. Ron Carter on bass and Billy Childs on piano anchor the sessions, creating an intimate trio sound that grounds the orchestral sweep around them. The idea was straightforward: take twelve of opera's most celebrated arias and let a jazz musician with six decades of feeling translate them through improvisation and melodic instinct.
What emerges is uneven but honest. On Puccini's "Donna Non Vidi Mai," Washington's tenor sax cuts through the orchestra with genuine drama, the kind of emotional directness that never required him to be flashy. AllMusic reviewer Jonathan Widran recognized what the album was attempting: not reinvention, but a jazz musician applying his artistry as a melodist to material outside the usual repertoire. The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings gave it three and a half stars, a solid endorsement for what amounts to a stylistic sidestep.
This isn't peak Washington—his most inventive or most swinging work came earlier. But Aria works as what it is: a late-career project where a musician comfortable across multiple saxophones and decades of sessions could spend time with beautiful material and play it with the kind of unrushed attention most of his catalog never quite allowed. It's a record for people already invested in Washington, not a starting point, and not meant to be.
Who's playing
Where next?
More by Grover Washington Jr.
All 22 albums →
The musicians on this record
The Bass And I 1997
Ron Carter
plays bass here
plays bass here
Map to the Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro 2014
Billy Childs
plays piano here
plays piano here
