Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
When the 18-time Grammy Award-winning banjoist Bela Fleck speaks of his years-long collaboration with the late pianist Chick Corea, he can sound like a bashful student musician, still obviously in awe of the jazz titan whose impact transformed him as a teenager in the ‘70s. “Remembrance” is a new double album which serves as a moving final document of the profound creative and personal rapport that Fleck and Corea first showcased in 2007. It’s also a crucial addendum to Corea’s legacy, featuring three of his previously unreleased compositions as well as five short free improvisations, recorded live in concert in 2019 and via traded sound files in the midst of the Covid pandemic.
“Cubop Lives!” is the latest release by multi-faceted pianist Zaccai Curtis. As a musician who is so deeply steeped in the jazz and bebop tradition and so vivaciously immersed in the worlds of Afro-Cuban jazz, Curtis found himself wanting to pay homage to the great musicians in whose steps he has trod who brought together the distinct fusion of these musical cultures. The album title holds manifold meaning as it pays tribute to the music that has come before it, Cubop referring to the cultural and musical fusion of Cuban music and bebop.
Also this week, pianist-composer David Benoit unveils a bold new album, “Timeless,” which is his first studio recording to feature a big band; saxophone titan Eric Alexander is back in a small group setting for his latest, “Timing is Everything”; and Boston-born-and-bred saxophonist and composer Gregory Groover Jr. presents a recital of eleven original tone-parallels to family and friends on his second album as a leader, “Lovabye.”