Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
With an assured m
aturity and vocal confidence far beyond her years, the young singer Jazzmeia Horn arrives with her debut recording, “A Social Call.” The Texas-born singer, who won the 2013 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Competition and took top honors at the Thelonious Monk Institute International Jazz Competition in 2015, offers up fresh takes on evergreen standards, hard bop anthems, songs of spiritual intent and R & B nuggets. “This album is a few things,” Jazzmeia explains. “It’s a call to social responsibility, to know your role in your community. It’s about being inspired by things that happen in your life and being able to touch others.”
Drummer Tina Raymond’s debut CD, “Left Right Left,” is a musical journey through the American Progressive movement. She conceived of the project in the aftermath of the recent presidential election, choosing a mix of patriotic songs and more recent tunes by 20th Century artists who are associated with the struggle for civil rights, anti-war activism, and equality, like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Joan Baez. With master musicians like Art Lande, who is considered one of the premiere improvisational jazz pianists today, and bassist Putter Smith, this adventurous effort will appeal to jazz lovers of any political persuasion.
Also this we
ek, it’s the second album as collaborators by saxophonist Cory Weeds and the Jeff Hamilton Trio, “Dreamsville”.
Trombonist Chris Wasburne’s “Rags and Roots” is a bi-hemispheric ragtime revival, covering a century’s worth of compositions from New Orleans, New York, Haiti, Cuba, Mexico and Brazil.
Lebanese piani
st Tarek Yamani offers up stark, jazz-influenced original material on “Peninsular,” featuring a five-piece Emeriti percussion troupe performing in a Bedouin tradition rarely heard outside the Persian Gulf.