Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
Five years after its first volume, Alternative Guitar Summit returns with “Honoring Pat Martino, Vol. 2,” a second tribute to one of jazz’s towering voices drawn largely from 2021 pandemic-era sessions. What began as a canceled live event evolved into a series of intimate studio recordings, bringing together a distinguished group of guitarists to celebrate Mr. Martino’s enduring legacy. Guitarists including Kurt Rosenwinkel, Dave Stryker, Paul Bollenback, project producer Joel Harrison and others offer personal interpretations that reflect both reverence and individuality.
Cecile McLorin Salvant, a 2020 MacArthur Fellow and three-time Grammy Award winner, is a singer and composer bringing historical perspective, a renewed sense of drama, and an enlightened musical understanding to both jazz standards and her own original compositions. She’s performed with orchestras regularly over the last decade-and-a-half and intended to make an album with one sooner in her career but other projects intervened. Now she releases “With Every Breath I Take,” featuring The Netherlands’ Metropole Orkest, performing timeless songs newly arranged and conducted by the acclaimed and innovative Darcy James Argue.
Also this week, Grammy-nominated pianist and composer Joey Alexander returns with his 8th studio album, “Celestial Keeper,” drawing inspiration from the nature and rhythm of life of his home in Indonesia; La Lucha, a trio featuring bassist Alejandro Arena of Colombia, pianist John C. O’Leary of Mexico and drummer Mark Feinman of the United States, presents its new album, “Tides,” featuring special guests Wycliffe Gordon and Jeff Coffin; and following her internationally acclaimed and multi-award-winning 2023 debut, Mongolian-born pianist Shuteen Erdenebaatar returns with “Under the Same Stars,” an exquisite duo album with the celebrated German bassist and clarinetist Nils Kugelmann.