Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
It’s the time of year when we seek out the best of the new jazz holiday releases to brighten the season. One of jazz music’s best loved voices, Jane Monheit, is back with “The Merriest,” a warm and fuzzy holiday project guaranteed to stir up feelings of nostalgia, family and home.
Acclaimed solo artists, husband and wife Calbria Foti on vocals and Bob McChesney on trombone are together for the first time on “Together for Christmas,” a glorious fifteen-song set mixing Christmas carols and holiday classics.
And Hendrik Meurkens combines both harmonica and vibraphone on “Christmas Vibes,” delivering a beautiful mix of warm holiday sounds with unique arrangements by his pianist Steve Rudolph.
Also this week, the now 72-year-old pianist Thomas Clausen, a key contributor and participant in the development of Danish jazz since his arrival on the scene in the early 1970s, has worked with everything from big bands to choirs, as well as chamber and theater music. On “Back 2 Basics,” he and his trio realize and reimagine a program of standards with an exquisitely developed intuitive interplay.
And trumpeter and composer Rebecca Coupe Franks has woven her playful take on our solar system into compositions and arrangements with expressively catchy melodies and deep orbital grooves, taking us on an inner and outer harmonic journey on “Planets,” with Luis Perdomo on piano, Larry Grenadier on bass and Johnathan Blake on drums.