Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
“Wild Dance” is a trans-generational undertaking initiated by the grand master of Italian jazz, Enrico Ra
va. Energized by joyous experiences on the road, the ever youthful trumpeter took his new working quartet of the last two years into the studio, joined by trombonist Gianluca Petrella, an internationally noted player through his contributions to three of Rava’s acclaimed post-millennium discs as well as a string of CDs under his own name. “I love the sound of a trumpet and trombone together,” Rava says. “The trombone is, more or less, almost the same instrument as the trumpet anyway, just in a different register, and what you can do with them in unison is very special.” As on a couple of his 1970s small group recordings, Rava has once again assembled a band with a guitarist instead of a pianist providing the harmonic center, filling with what Rava calls “delicate clouds of sounds.”
Carlos Henriquez started studying music at a young age, playing guitar th
rough high school and taking up the bass while enrolled at the Juilliard School’s Music Advancement Program. He was involved with the LaGuardia High School Concert Jazz Ensemble which won first place in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s inaugural Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition in 1996. In 1998, shortly after graduating high school, Henriquez joined the Wynton Marsalis Septet and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Since then, he’s toured the world and been featured on more than 25 albums. “The Bronx Pyramid” is his debut recording as a leader, and the second release from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s new Blue Engine record label. He expertly blends modern jazz with Latin rhythms on original compositions and new arrangements of Latin and jazz standards.
Also this week, 
drawn from jubilee concerts held in Germany to mark Eberhard Weber’s 75th birthday, “Hommage” incorporates big band arrangements of Weber compositions as well as striking new music fro
m old friends Pat Metheny and Jan Garbarek; “Hamilton and Hamilton Live in Bern” is the first recording of saxophonist Scott Hamilton with drummer Jeff Hamilton and his trio; and one of Chicago’s best young saxophonists, Rajiv Halim, debuts on CD with “Foundation.”