Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
The entire city of New Orleans becomes one big party during Mardi Gras, but Delfeayo Marsalis and the Uptown Jazz Orchestra know that there’s no place to be quite like “Uptown on a Mardi Gras Day.” With their latest album, the UJO provides the ultimate soundtrack for Carnival Time in the Crescent City with a spirited collection of Mardi Gras classics and buoyant new originals. The album is a unique combination of big band swing feel, small group jazz spirit, and brass band funkiness that would be equally appropriate on the parade route or in the concert hall. It features guest appearances by saxophonist Branford Marsalis, drummer Marvin “Smitty” Smith, and vocalists Glen-David Andrews, Dr. Brice Miller and Tonya Boyd-Cannon.
On “Standard-ized!,” the newest project from Eric Goletz, the trombonist reimagines modern jazz standards with hip arrangements that fuse his contemporary jazz sound with swing, Latin and funk. Goletz is not only a virtuoso instrumentalist, he is also a first-rate arranger and composer. His first two albums, released after spending 30 years as a composer and sideman, largely comprised his original tunes. For the new disc, Goletz decided to focus his creative endeavors on music composed by other artists, like Charlie Parker, Horace Silver, Michel LeGrand and other jazz luminaries.
Also this week, trumpeter Brad Goode, with longtime collaborators keyboardist Jeff Jenkins and Ghanaian drum legend Paa Kown, creates an imaginative, hard-grooving soundscape on “The Unknown,” his 19th solo release;
the Planet D Nonet celebrates the music of Duke Ellington, gleaned from the period 1956 through 1963, on “Blues to Be There”;
and Bill Warfield, Director of Jazz Studies at Lehigh University, gathers up his Hell’s Kitchen Funk Orchestra for their fourth release, “Time Capsule.”