Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
Though he was only 43 years old when he passed away in 1975, Oliver Nelson left behind a body of work that is staggering in its breadth and depth. He’s revered for his work with Monk, Basie, Clark Terry and Jimmy Smith, his soundtrack work for television and movies, as well as his own classic albums. More than 40 years later, his influence as a composer and arranger is still felt, although Nelson’s name isn’t mentioned as often as his innovations. Bandleader/composer John Vanore is determined to change that with “Stolen Moments: Celebrating Oliver Nelson,” the first large ensemble recording of Nelson’s music in decades. Vanore revisits nine pieces that were either composed or arranged by Nelson over the course of his prolific career.
For his new CD, “To Love and Be Loved,” Harold Mabern reunites with 88-year-old drumming legend Jimmy Cobb, with whom he first played in Miles Davis’s band during a brief but memorable stint in 1963. The rhythm section is completed by the impeccably swinging Nat Reeves, while the frontline features Mabern’s prize student and frequent collaborator Eric Alexander on tenor saxophone and, on three tracks, another Mabern protégé, trumpeter Freddie Hendrix. In discussing his reimagining of classic tunes and the inspiration for the album, Mabern quotes an unlikely mentor for a jazz musician: Albert Einstein. The famed physicist once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, all there ever will be to know and understand.”
Also this week, saxophonist Jeff Coffin unveils his twelfth album as a leader, “Next Time Yellow,” his first full-length group recording produced in his home studio.
Brian McCarthy explores music from the Civil War era for his new nonet recording, “The Better Angels of Our Nature”.
Trumpeter Farnell Newton offers 
up his second release as a leader, “Back to Earth.”