Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
For an incredible eight decades now, feisty vibraphonist and jazz icon Terry Gibbs has demonstrated the sheer joy of performing. In performance, he behaves like an exuberant fan of his own band, cheering them on, punctuating arrangements and solos with non-verbal interjections. His spirit was cultivated over the years, having played in significant jazz eras with the formative giants of the genre, including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Goodman. The same spirit is in abundance on “92 Years Young: Jammin’ at the Gibbs House,” a collection of songs recorded live in Gibbs’ living room. Terry’s son, Gerry, leads the ensemble backing Terry, whose tone is impeccable and whose energy belies his senior status.
Drummer Louis Hayes, who turned 80-years-old this May, has performed over the years with such jazz titans as Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane, Oscar Peterson and Freddie Hubbard. When he moved to New York in 1956 at age 19, he was introduced to the jazz world as the driving force in the legendary Horace Silver Quintet, in which he would spend three years, appearing on a string of classic Blue Note albums. Now for his label debut as a leader for the label, Hayes pays tribute to his former boss with “Serenade for Horace,” putting his own spin on a program of Silver compositions.
Also this week, Mats Holmquist leads the Latvian Radio Big Band, with special guests Dick Oatts and Randy Brecker, on “Big Band Minimalism”.
Japanese pianist and composer Yoko Miwa offers up her fifth disc as a leader, “Pathways”.
Pianist Theo Hill unveils his sophomore effort, “Promethean.”