REVIVE Music proudly announces the February 26 release of “Pathways”, the rousing debut EP from drummer Zane Rodulfo. Accompanied by luminaries such as saxophonist Dayna Stephens, guitarist Nir Felder, guitarist Marvin Dolly, pianist Noble Jolley, bassist Luques Curtis and steel pan players Victor Provost and Earl Brooks Jr, Rodulfo takes the baton from his Trinidadian forebears and constructs a feast for the senses that explores a myriad of moods in the span of five expansive tracks that burst forth from a foundation of subtle rhythm and the abiding comfort of epic memory.
A thesis project turned formal introduction, Rodulfo’s inaugural release is the musical byproduct of the physical journey that took him from his boyhood home in Trinidad & Tobago to an undergraduate program at Oberlin College & Conservatory and ultimately to the hallowed streets, studios and stages of New York City, where he completed his Masters degree at New York University.
Rodulfo presents a prismatic collection that is at once balm and tribute to his Caribbean roots that unfolds with all of the beauty and purpose of a love letter sealed in a bottle and shoved off at high tide toward home. Playing with a maturity and cohesiveness that belies the brevity of the track list, the EP is a sonic reclamation that finds Rodulfo collecting all things familiar from a well of sonic influences and evocative thoughts to construct a monument to the journey. “Pathways” bookends the highs and lows of dense, emotive melody with Yoruba traditions that proliferated during the Transatlantic slave trade and the elevated approach to steel pan perfected by Othello Molineaux, Leroy Williams and others.