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The origin story of jazz has been debated and mythologized. The first jazz players interviewed often attributed their knowledge and sound to one man: Buddy Bolden. There have been many attempts in the past century to reenact concerts of Bolden’s heyday, yet most attempts to bring his sound to life have been doomed from a lack of available information regarding that specific period in music history. Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Derrick Shezbie has partnered with historian Charles Tolman in an effort to capture the spirit of Buddy Bolden with “The Ghost of Buddy Bolden.” The album is the culmination of heavy research and a reincarnation of the circumstances that Bolden would have created music in, and features an array of accomplished African American New Orleans musicians.
Hailed by the Vancouver Sun as “one of Canada’s premier drummer-composer-bandleaders,” Toronto-based Ernesto Cervini has proven restlessly creative at the helm of the Ernesto Cervini Quartet, his innovative Turboprop sextet, his co-led trios MEM3, Myriad3 and Tunetown, and his Radiohead cover project Idiotech, among other efforts. With “Tetrahedron,” Cervini flips the script once again, undertaking his first project with an electric bassist (Rich Brown) and an electric guitar (the acclaimed Nir Felder). Together with them and the marvelous Cuban-born, Toronto-based alto saxophonist Luis Deniz, Cervini reveals still new facets to his musical imagination.
Also this week, another Canadian ensemble, the award-winning Emie R Roussel Trio, unveils its fifth album, “Rhythme de Passage”;
Denver jazz icon and saxophonist Keith Oxman collaborates with revered veteran Houston Person on “Two Cigarettes in the Dark”;
and Special EFX featuring Chieli Minucci are joined by “All Stars” including Eric Marienthal, Gerald Veasley, Regina Carter and Nelson Rangell on their latest release.