Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
August 29, 2020 will mark the centennial of one of jazz’s most iconic figures, Charlie Parker. The celebration gets off to a jubilant swinging start with an alto saxophone summit bringing together three of modern jazz’s most acclaimed voices: Vincent Herring, Bobby Watson and Gary Bartz. The soul-stirring “Bird at 100” traces a direct lineage from Parker’s birthplace in Kansas City to the stage of Smoke Jazz Club in New York, where these influential acolytes look back from the vantage point of jazz in 2019, with a combination of reverence, respect and adventure. The program offers a buoyant mix of classic Parker tunes, familiar standards once recorded by Bird, and new compositions written in honor of the master.
While jazz interpretations of classic tunes by the Allman Brothers Band might come off as a surprise to some, the genre always held great inspiration for the band and its members. In referring to the band’s drummer Jai Johanny Johanson, Greg Allman once recalled, “Jaimoe turned all of us on to so much neat stuff. He gave us a proper education about jazz and got us into Miles Davis and John Coltrane. ‘Kind of Blue’ was always on the turntable—Duane really got his head around that album—and he also seriously dug Coltrane’s ‘My Favorite Things.’” Now comes “Big Band of Brothers: A Jazz Celebration of the Allman Brothers Band,” released in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the band’s debut album. Joining the Big Band of Brothers on the 10-song set are singers Marc Broussard and Ruthie Foster, guitarist Jack Pearson and trombonist Wycliffe Gordon.
Also this week, singer and songwriter Carmen Lundy pays tribute to her vocal influences, the “Modern Ancestors” who left behind a legacy and defined the sound and spirit of jazz;
and the Lionel Hampton Big Band featuring Jason Marsalis are captured live in California for the new CD, “Live at Rossmoor.”
Grammy-nominated Cuban pianist, vocalist and composer Roberto Fonseca delves into the music of his homeland with his ninth release, “Yesun”;