Reginald Cyntje

By Giovanni Russonello · January 5, 2016 
In February, trombonist Reginald Cyntje was featured on NPR Music’s Jazz Night in America, where his band debuted the music that would appear on Cyntje’s next record. It was a rare moment of national exposure for one of D.C.’s grandest talents. Hopefully some of his new fans kept up with him, because that spring Cyntje released the album, his fourth, titled Spiritual Awakening, and it turns out this one’s his best yet.

Cyntje pays close attention to color and control. He doesn’t dally around much with the trombone’s typical devices: the rumble, the dramatic bend, the growl. When he gets playful—as in his solo on “Awakening”—he makes his short, chortling bursts and lazily arching melodies fresh and effective, never disrupting the emotional temperature of the full piece.


He uses the same sensitivity when writing his tunes and assembling his bands, and for Spiritual Awakening, each of those actions seems to have influenced the other—the music fits snugly to its unorthodox ensemble, and is expanded by it. The band features Allyn Johnson on piano and Rhodes, Amin Gumbs on drums, Brian Settles on tenor saxophone, Herman Burney on bass, Victor Provost on steel pan and Christie Dashiell on vocals.

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