Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify 
Think of the songwriters whose work comprises the cannon of jazz standards, and names like Gershwin, Rodgers, Berlin and Porter immediately come to mind. On his new album, “Black, Brown, and Blue,” pianist Eric Reed argues for a revision of that canon to focus on Black and Brown composers, songwriters whose work originates within the jazz realm rather than on the Broadway stage. The disc features music written by jazz masters like Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, McCoy Tyner, Wayne Shorter Benny Golson, Horace Silver, Buddy Collette and Buster Williams, along with jazz-conversant pop/R&B songwriters Stevie Wonder and Bill Withers.
In the eighteen years since she arrived in New York City, Sara Caswell has become the first call violinist for creative bandleaders in the jazz world and beyond. Her credentials include tours and recordings with luminaries including esperanza spalding, Henry Threadgill, Fred Hersch, Regina Carter, Bran Mehldau, the WDR Big Band, Brian Blade and others. That demanding schedule has left Caswell with limited time to focus on her own projects. She hasn’t released an album under her own name in over 17 years. That long delay finally comes to an end with the release of “The Way to You.” It features the stellar band that Caswell has led for the past decade, with guitarist Jesse Lewis, bassist Ike Sturm and drummer Jared Schonig.
Also this week, “Live @ the Side Door” is the newest release from esteemed drummer Vince Ector and his Organatomy Trio +, capturing the stellar Philadelphia bred/NY-based outfit’s 2020 performance at the iconic Side Door Jazz Club in Old Lyme, CT.;
5-time Grammy winner Billy Childs assembles an all-star quartet with trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, bassist Scott Colley and drummer Brian Blade on “The Winds of Change”;
and drummer and composer Kendrick Scott presents “Corridors,” a striking new album that finds him paring down to a trio featuring saxophonist Walter Smith III and bassist Reuben Rogers.