Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. 
Critically acclaimed vocalist Jeff Baker returns with his fifth release, “Phrases,” an alive and bristling set of originals and thoughtfully conceived pop and jazz standards. Collaborating with some of the most influential and compelling jazz musicians in the world today—Brian Blade, Steve Wilson, Marquis Hill, Clark Sommers and Geoff Bradfield—Baker and his musical director, pianist Darrell Grant, present a provocative collection of original songs and arrangements based on texts by writers such as Pablo Neruda, J.D. Salinger, A.A. Milne and Salvador Plascencia. Commenting on Bradfield’s most ambitious and personal recording yet, All About Jazz says, “The songs, the arrangements, the musicianship, the group dynamic, the singing are near perfection.”
For his newest CD, “Puerto de Buenos Aires 1933,” drummer and composer Guillermo Nojechowicz has given his most personal, profoundly moving project to date: a soundtrack for the story of his grandmother’s flight from Poland to Argentina in 1933, as the Nazis were coming to power in Germany. Nojechowicz wrote this cinematic music for his multi-national ensemble El Eco with bassist, fellow Argentine Fernando Huergo, Brazilian pianist Helio Alves, Italian saxophonist Marco Pignataro, New York Voices co-founder Kim Nazarian, and special guest, trumpeter Brian Lynch.
Also this week, Toronto guitarist and composer Harley Card introduces eleven new compositions written for his long-standing quintet on “The Greatest Invention”.
Seattle drummer Phil Parisot adds longtime fr
iend and collaborator, New York trumpeter Tatum Greenblatt, to his usual working quartet for “Creekside”.
“Mi Mundo” is the solo debut of Brenda Navarrete, a Cuban-based singer, songwriter, and percussionist who has previously made an impact with the internationally-acclaimed Cuban group Interactivo.