Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
Quincy Davis is a professor of jazz drums at the University of North Texas and continues to keep a busy performance profile. He lived in New York for 10 years where he performed with and recorded with many luminaries of jazz including Frank Wess, Hank Jones, Tom Harrell, Clark Terry, Kurt Elling, Ernestine Anderson and many more. Quincy’s sophomore release, “Q Vision,” is about seeing things from many different perspectives at the same time. He’s joined by Peter Bernstein, JD Allen, Warren Wolf and Ugonna Okegwo, among others, in septet, quintet and trio configurations.
“The Weather is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful” is the second release from the Jeff Benedict Big Big Band. A diverse collection of compositions and arrangements ranging from the straight-ahead to New Orleans second-line, the recording reflects the influences of Quincy Jones, Pat Metheny, Michael Brecker, Cannonball Adderly and Phil Woods. The disc features four original compositions by Benedict and five of his arrangements. The theme that binds the selections together is a “throwback” to the 1970s—when big band was frequently heard in TV and movie scores, and many of which were written by big-band jazz musicians like Jones and Pat Williams.
Also this week, pianist Bob James and trumpeter Till Bronner are together “On Vacation”;
Harpist Motoshi Kosako, bassist Michael Manring and percussionist Chris Garcia team up as KoMaGo Trio on “Foxing Hour”;
and Le Coq Records presents “The Jazz All Stars Vol. 1,” featuring John Patitucci, Alex Acuna, Bill Cunliffe, Terell Stafford, Michael Dease, among others.