The members of the Mack Avenue Superband represent a diverse range of generations and styles. It offers a rare opportunity, for instance, to hear NEA Jazz Master Gary Burton engage with a group of younger player
s with more of a hard-bop focus than he usually encounters in his own more modern-leaning bands. “This is definitely not my normal zone,” he admits with a chuckle. “But this is the music I grew up playing…I was looking forward to a relaxing, fun jam session kind of setting where I didn’t have to read a million notes and play a lot of complex music. In spite of that, some of the music ended up being fairly complicated and challenging.” Burton’s band mates, recorded “Live From the 2015 Detroit Jazz Festival,” include bassist Christian McBride, the reeds of Kirk Whalum and Tia Fuller, drummer Carl Allen, pianist Christian Sands and trumpeter Freddie Hendrix.
On their latest recording, guitarist Dave Stryker and saxophonist Steve Slagle explore the “Routes” they’ve travelled, and the musical roots they’ve explored in their creative collaboration of several decades. The Stryker-Slagle Band is expanded here to include some imaginative and innovative 4-horn writing by Slagle in an all-original program by the pair, as well as a Charles Mingus masterpiece. What stays in place is that Stryker and Slagle remain the soul-satisfying, deep-groove, superchops players they’ve been across decades, and they continue to manifest their extraordinary collaborative powers.
Also this week, two new discs featuring live performances from the oldest continuously running jazz club in the country, the Deer Head Inn in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, bythe Phil Woods Quintet and the band FivePlay, led by drummer Sherrie Maricle.
The Mark Guiliana Jazz Quartet’s debut as an acoustic ensemble, “Family First,” presenting eight new original 
compositions the drummer composed especially for his musical partners and friends.