Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
Mads Tolling is a two-time Grammy Award winner, and was named last year’s winner of the DownBeat Critics Poll Rising Star Award for Violin. He’s a former longtime member of Stanley Clarke’s band and the Turtle Island String Quartet, and has also played with Kenny Barron, Ramsey Lewis and Paquito D’Rivera. As a burgeoning young master growing up in Copenhagen, listening to a Miles Davis cassette introduced Mads to the ‘60s sounds of jazz, soul and early R&B. He harkens back to that era on his new CD, “Mads Tolling & the Mads Men: Playing the 60s.” It features fun and exciting interpretations of timeless movie themes, popular TV classics, and celebrated songs ranging from “Mission Impossible,” “The Pink Panther” and “Meet the Flintstones” to Georgia on My Mind” and “A Taste of Honey.”
50 years ago, magic was made on the stage of the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, when the timeless cool of Frank Sinatra met the robust swing of the Count Basie Orchestra. “Sinatra at the Sands” has remained a beloved classic ever since, the perfect marriage of old-school pop and big band jazz. Singer, songwriter and saxophonist Curtis Stigers has been bringing those worlds together in his own music for the last three decades, which makes him an ideal candidate to reinterpret Ol’ Blue Eyes’ cherished repertoire for modern ears. On “One More For the Road,” Stigers finds his own version of that elusive Sinatra-Basie chemistry with the virtuosic and ebulliently swinging musicians of the Danish Radio Big Band. Recorded in the band’s headquarters in Copenhagen, the bristling live recording features the DRBB playing vibrant takes based on the original Nelson Riddle and Billy May arrangements, sparking inspired vocal performances from Stigers.
Also this week, pianist, singer and songwriter Ben Sidran is joined by Will Lee, Will Bernard, John Ellis and others on “Picture Him Happy”.
Trombonis
t Michael Dease unveils his latest project, “All These Hands,” featuring Renee Rosnes, Lewis Nash and Etienne Charles.
London-born pianist and composer Dan Costa debuts with “Suite Tres Rios,” which DownBeat describes as fusing “classical structure, American jazz and Brazilan melody in an entrancing homage to Brazil.”