Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
It is fitting that four-time Grammy Award winning bassist Christian McBride would eventually record at the Village Vanguard, the most hallowed and historical nightclub in jazz: an underground Mt. Olympus where the gods of the music—from John Coltrane to Bill Evans—have cast their syncopated spells. “You can literally feel the ghosts of all the legends that played there,” McBride says. “You feel Coltrane hovering in the vortex. You feel Monk hovering in the vortex. Miles, Mingus…you feel all of that in the air.” And with his new CD, “Christian McBride Trio: Live at the Village Vanguard,” you can feel and hear McBride in the same air, with his magnificent trio, which features drummer Ulysses Owens, Jr. and pianist Christian Sands. It’s the fruit of McBride’s long association with the Vanguard, where his first appearance as a leader for the club was in 1995.
As one of modern jazz’s premier voices on the tenor sax, John Ellis is also a highly in-demand sideman with an impossibly busy schedule. The runner-up in the 2002 Thelonious Monk International Saxophone competition, he’s since worked with artists as diverse as bass great John Patitucci, organ legend Dr. Lonnie Smith, guitar groove master Charlie Hunter and pop icon Sting. His band Double-Wide, which he formed in 2007, has proven to be a fertile and colorful outlet to ease the tension of Ellis’ internal tug-of-war between New Orleans and New York. For their new CD, “Charm,” the band is anchored as always by sousaphonist Matt Perrine and drummer Jason Marsalis, who lend the group its buoyant New Orleans groove. Gary Versace returns to the fold on keyboards. Completing the line-up is trombonist Alan Ferber, who appeared as a special guest on Double-Wide’s second album.
Also this we
ek, guitarist Lee Ritenour twists, flips and reconstructs some new material and tunes from his catalogue on “A Twist of Rit,” featuring Dave Grusin, Patrice Rushen, Ernie Watts, Dave Weckl, Bob Sheppard and others; guitar master Pat Martino is special guest for saxophonist Eric Alexander and his quartet on “The Real Thing”; and ace trumpeter Joe Magnarelli takes the court with trombonist Steve Davis, organist Brian Charette and drummer Rudy Royston for “Three on Two.”