Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
Coinciding with celebrating its 80th anniversary, the legendary Count Basie Orchestra continues to make music history with the release of “A Very Swingin’ Basie Christmas.” The first full-length yuletide album in the expansive Basie discography, the disc boasts classic holiday songs, rendered in quintessential Basie style, under the masterful direction of longtime Basie trumpeter Scotty Barnhart. The disc also showcases such guest artists as legendary singer Johnny Mathis, award-winning R-and- B singer Ledisi, veteran pianist Ellis Marsalis and iconic tenor saxophonist Plas Johnson. It also represents the return of the multi-Grammy winning Basie composer-arranger Sammy Nestico and 2015 multi-Grammy winning arranger Gordon Goodwin.
Cory Weeds like to build bridges. Within the 14 years that Cory elevated the Cellar Jazz Club in Vancouver to one of the most highly regarded stops on the circuit, he forged alliances with jazz communities in New York and Seattle as well as across the Canadian jazz landscape. Now we can add a bridge to the Los Angeles scene as well. Jeff Hamilton is a mainstay of the Southern California jazz scene as co-leader of the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra and a first call session player as well as fronting the eponymous trio heard on the new CD with Weeds, “This Happy Madness.” His trio mates, Christoph Luty on bass and Tamir Hendelman on piano, are also first call plays and featured players with the Orchestra.
Check it out here
Also this week, the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra celebrates the season with “Joyful Jazz,” featuring Freddy Cole on vocals and Sean Jones on trumpet; 
L.A.-based saxophonist and composer Kirsten Edkins, with the help of her mentor and friend Bob Sheppard, debuts on disc with “Art and Soul”; and drummer 
Chester Thompson, who has worked with everyone from Weather Report and Freddie Hubbard to Frank Zappa and Genesis, charges out of the box with the secondrecording from his straight-ahead jazz trio, “Simpler Times.”