Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
Several years in the making and infused with a lifetime of inspiration and appreciation, “Wareika Hill (Rastamonk Vibrations)” is Monty Alexander’s delightfully imaginative and compelling interpretation of the music of Thelonious Monk. Wareika Hill refers to a place in Jamaica where Rastafarian musicians used to gather, located behind Monty’s childhood home outside of Kingston. He would hear the musicians going up the hill playing their drums—and such became the early muse for these arrangements of Monk’s songs, infused with Jamaican grooves and childhood memories of not only Wareika Hill, but being introduced to Monk’s music as a teenager while recording as a sideman in the Federal Recordings Studios in Kingston.
After a decade of collaborative releases with large ensembles such as the WDR and Bob Mintzer Big Bands, New York Voices return to their roots, marking their 30th anniversary with one of the most ambitious, accomplished undertakings in their esteemed catalog. Peter Eldridge, Lauren Kinhan, Darmon Meader and Kim Nazarian apply their stamp to standards by Cole Porter and Al Jolson, modern jazz gems from Chick Corea and Fred Hersch, a deeply personal swing-era classic from Duke Ellington, songs by the Beatles, Dave Brubeck and Ivan Lins, and a pair from Cuban classical composer Ignacio Cervantes. “Reminiscing in Tempo” finds the quartet’s individual chops and their collective chemistry to be as powerful as ever, foretelling yet another creative span for this landmark group.
Also this week, Dave Bass, who retired from the Office of the Attorney General of California back in 2015, is back at the piano, keeping the torch burning for classic songs and elegant bebop on his new disc, “No Boundaries”
saxophonist Pureum Jin is joined by a dynamic group of young musicians, including pianist Jeremy Manasia and bassist Luke Sellick, for her debut release, “The Real Blue”;
and drummer Dave Robbins, a longtime mainstay on the Vancouver jazz scene, collects up his sextet for his second disc as a leader, “Joan of Art.”