Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. 
Jazz sensibility comes naturally to pianist Benny Green, the New York City-born son of a jazz saxophonist. At a young age, Green’s ear became fine-tuned to the art form, and he soon found himself invited to perform alongside jazz icons like Betty Carter, Freddie Hubbard and Ray Brown. His work in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers proved so deeply influential that he has since dedicated his career to straight-ahead hard bop. Prior to recording his brand new CD, “Then and Now,” Green had never featured either vocals or flute on any of his albums. Painting with rich aural colors and textures, he boldly steps into new musical space to feature both vocal sensation Veronica Swift and flautist Anne Drummond, along with his regular trio mates David Wong on bass and Kenny Washington on drums.
In 2015, Grammy-nominated and award-winning saxophonist, bassoonist and composer Ben Wendel released a music-video art project entitled “The Seasons,” inspired by a set of twelve piano pieces written and released each month by one of his favorite classical composers, Tchaikovsky, in 1876. Wendel’s modern take on the idea was to compose and release twelve original jazz chamber duets in video format with modern luminaries such as Joshua Redman, Julian Lage, Ambrose Akinmusire, and Gilad Hekselman. Although never released as a CD, it was nominated as one of the best ‘albums’ of the year by the New York Times. Earlier this year, he put together a quintet made up of some of the artists from the original video series and transformed the intimate setting of duos to something much grander. In addition to Hekselman, the dis also features pianist Aaron Parks, bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Eric Harland.
Also this week, keyboardist Jeb Patton and his trio pay homage to some of jazz’s piano masters on “Tenthish, Live in New York”;
Bassist Christian McBride draws on his hometown of Philadelphia and one of the city’s most beloved colloquialisms to christen his latest project, “Christian McBride’s New Jawn”;
And singer and spoken word artist Tony Adamo teams up with Mike Clark of Headhunters fame in paying tribute to the greats of jazz and to the art of improvisation with “Was Out Jazz Zone Mad.”