Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
The release of Harold Mabern’s new album, “Mabern Plays Mabern,” is the source of a mixture of pride and sorrow. Pride because Mabern’s 27th recording as leader, culled from the same three January 2018 nights at Smoke Jazz Club in New York City that generated his 26th, documents the legendary pianist, then 81, in prime form. Sorrow because the release is posthumous—Harold died in September at the age of 83. For this engagement, Mabern convened long-standing band-mates Eric Alexander on tenor sax, John Webber on bass and Joe Farnsworth on drums, augmented by trombonist Steve Davis and trumpeter Vincent Herring on alto. All members rise to the occasion on repertoire that spans 51 years of Mabern’s six decades as a recording artist, leader and sideman.
Trumpeter Carl Saunders started his career on the road with Stan Kenton in 1961 and then settled back in Las Vegas where, during the next 20 years, he played with a countless number of bands, including lead trumpet for Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra. He also traveled with such bandleaders as Harry James, Maynard Ferguson and Benny Goodman and worked in the big bands of Bill Holman, Gerald Wilson and Bob Florence. While widely recognized as one of the greatest jazz trumpeters in the world, it often surprises people to find that he’s also a prolific composer who has written hundreds of original compositions. Several of those are showcased on Carl’s new release, “Jazz Trumpet.”
Also this week, Pearl Django, a longtime favorite in the Pacific Northwest and one of the best known Gypsy jazz style groups around the world, unveils its fifteenth recording, “Simplicity”;
vocalist Kurt Elling teams up with pianist Danilo Perez for his latest, “Secrets are the Best Stories”;
and pianist and composer Connie Han offers up her second release as a leader, “Iron Starlet.”