Lexington musician has shot at a Grammy but says he feels like he’s already a winner

Even if he never gets to play there again, Zach Brock will forever have blueprints of the Royal Albert Hall etched in his mind. He’ll remember its look, its audiences, even the neighborhood the famed London venue calls home.

The Lexington-born, New York-based violinist has only played there once. But thanks to the miracle of modern recording and an army of technicians and negotiators, that single evening has been preserved. With a little help from the Grammy Awards this weekend, many more listeners will soon understand how special that visit to the Royal Albert Hall was.

For over a decade, Brock recorded and performed with Snarky Puppy, a massive jazz, fusion and funk collective that circulates as many as 30 players in and out of its ranks for a sound that shifts from pensive but pastoral calm to orchestral-fortified grooves. Brock was part of the Snarky Puppy lineup that journeyed to England for its debut concert at the Royal Albert Hall in November 2019. The performance was recorded and then released as “Live at the Royal Albert Hall” on March 13, 2020, just as the world was going into lockdown mode from the COVID-19 pandemic.

This weekend, almost a year to the day since hitting stores, “Live at the Royal Hall” will compete at the Grammy Awards for best Contemporary Instrumental Album. Should the album win, it will simply cement what already stands as a milestone performance occasion for Brock.

“For me, the best thing about this recording was that it was the first time I ever had a gig that afforded me the means to fly my family over to this incredible, iconic place,” Brock said last week by phone from his New Jersey home. “It was the first time my children had ever been out of the country, so they got to go to London and do the whole thing.

“If I never play there again in my entire life, I will remember that show like it was yesterday because everything about the whole experience is so vivid. It’s seared into my memory. I can see exactly what the back hallways look like. I know exactly what the stage looks like. The size of it, the lights, the building, the neighborhood around there. It’s just one of those things.

“In a way, though, I’ve already won. I’ve won everything I could ever hope for. I got to go play this concert, which was a particularly good performance, with some of my favorite musicians in the world with my family there. I could never receive a bigger award than that. Absolutely. That was a bucket list thing for me.”

Of course, what has happened in the year between the release “Live at the Royal Albert Hall” and this weekend’s Grammy ceremony has been catastrophic for the performing arts. Brock saw a full schedule of touring activity, both with Snarky Puppy and projects of his own, vanish. Instead, lockdown kicked off in spectacularly frightening fashion. Brock’s wife, filmmaker Erin Harper, became what the violinist called “a long hauler” with the coronavirus, causing her to remain in home isolation from Brock and their twin daughters for two months.

“Erin was just living in a room by herself, going nuts with me bringing food to the door. She was, understandably really worried about getting the kids sick. This was at the beginning of the pandemic. Nobody had any information about anything. All of us were flying even more blind than we are now. It was so scary. The kids have been amazing, though. They’re incredibly resilient. Ever since they were born, we’ve never been this intensely together and maybe we never would have been had it not been for what has happened. So, silver lining with that. We’re healthy now.”

Frustrated with what was becoming “a wasted year” for his career, Brock took on a monthly residency at Brooklyn’s Soapbox Gallery, which live streams concerts from its modest-sized performance space. Brock released a January concert there, a session of solo violin music, as a recording titled “Light Shines Through.” A second album of home recordings incorporating video imagery from Harper, “Polyphony,” is due out later this month. Brock is hoping to follow them with a third recording.

This weekend, though, all eyes and ears are on Snarky Puppy. The band faces strong competition at the Grammys. “Live at the Royal Albert Hall” is up against recent works by pianist Jon Batiste, string duo Black Violin, harmonica stylist Gregoire Maret and trumpeter Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah. But Brock said a Grammy win for Snarky Puppy would serve as an affirmation for the legions of staff representatives that jumped through myriad legal hoops to make the Royal Albert Hall concert happen in the first place as well as for the band’s road crew, which has been left financially devastated by the lack of touring over the past year.

“It took so much to make this concert happen. It was a lot more than just a large band with a recording crew and a record company going in. It was so much more. It was a full-on touring production. It was a radio broadcasting team from London plus engineers coming and setting stuff up in the hall. I can’t even imagine the legal negotiations that have to go on to make a live record at Royal Albert Hall.

“I think that the best thing for me is to hope we win so the people who really bled to make this happen are honored. When we play, the band is going to show up whether we’re at the Royal Albert Hall or the bar down the street. But for the crew, the tour people that make our shows possible, I think a win would be really significant.”

Other Kentucky ties to watch for at the Grammy’s

Usually, it’s the country music contingency that represents Kentucky at the Grammy Awards. This year, not so much.

The state’s three most currently visible country ambassadors – Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson and Tyler Childers – released new recordings in 2020. But all were issued after the Grammys’ Sept. 1, 2019 to Aug. 31, 2020 nominating period, so none will be eligible for consideration until next year.

Curiously, Simpson is still up for a Grammy this weekend, but for a very different project. His fourth album, “Sound & Fury,” has been nominated for Best Rock Album. Released Sept. 27, 2019, the heavily guitar and synthesizer driven recording was a radical departure from Simpson’s previous music.

The nomination makes Simpson the first artist ever be nominated Best Country Album and Best Rock Album at the Grammys. He previously won (in 2017) in the former category for his third album, “A Sailor’s Guide to Earth.”

Simpson’s newest recordings, a two-volume pair of bluegrass sets titled “Cuttin’ Grass,” were released in October and December of 2020.

Neither of Kentucky’s other Grammy entries this year are from the country field, either. Louisvillian Jack Harlow is up for Best Rap Performance for his Top 10 single “What’s Poppin’” while the ever-adored late John Prine (technically not a Kentucky native, but certainly a favorite son for summers spent during his youth in Muhlenberg County) gets a final Grammy nomination for Best American Roots Performance thanks to the posthumously released tune “I Remember Everything.”

Watch: The 63rd Annual Grammy Awards airs at 8 p.m. March 14 on CBS-TV.