Brian Culbertson — Live in Las Vegas, 2018

This filmed live concert documents pianist and multi-instrumentalist Brian Culbertson in Las Vegas in 2018, released as Colors of Love Tour (Live in Las Vegas). A figure of American contemporary jazz, Culbertson delivers a nearly two-hour full concert where smooth jazz meets funk, soul and R&B, driven by a full band of horns, keyboards and rhythm section. The repertoire draws widely on the album Colors of Love and on a catalogue spanning more than twenty years, between dance grooves and instrumental ballads. Culbertson moves from piano to trombone and leads the stage like a bandleader-showman, in the polished sound design typical of his live films. Representative of mainstream live jazz in the 2010s, this filmed live concert shows the craft of building a long instrumental set, alternating collective climaxes with more intimate passages. A carefully produced document on one of the recurring headliners of the North American smooth jazz scene.