Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
“When You Wish 
Upon a Star” is the latest project from legendary guitarist and composer Bill Frisell. Comprised of music from iconic film and television scores, the disc is conceived not only as an homage, but as a celebration of music-making with longtime collaborators and their collective commitment to refined interpretation of material. It brings together and all-star ensemble of Frisell’s frequent musical partners: violist Eyvind Kang, drummer Rudy Royston, bassist Thomas Morgan and vocalist Pedra Haden. Frisell describes the group of friends’ unique process as beginning with listening to as many versions of the pieces as possible and committing any lyrics to heart, followed by total immersion in the original score, learning the notes and hours of practice. The cornerstones of the disc are four suites of music that reside deep with the collective psyche: To Kill a Mockingbird, Psycho, Once Upon a Time in the West and The Godfather. “I’ve been watching TV and moves my whole life,” Frisell notes. “What I’ve seen and heard there is a huge part of, and is embedded so deeply into the fabric of what fires up my musical imagination.”
With a nod to the fabled trumpet duo sessions of Fats Navarro and Howard McGhee, and Freddie Hubbard and Woody Shaw, trumpeters Ray Vega and Thomas Marriott’s fiery 2010 quintet release hit number one on the jazz charts and established the group through their festival and club appearances. Returning to the studio, the two are joined this time by George Colligan on the Hammond B-3 organ and again by drummer Matt Jorgensen as they explore a collection of originals, standards, and jazz classics from Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan, Curtis Fuller and Art Blakey.
Also this week, drummer Brian Andres and his powerhouse Afro-Cuban Jazz Cartel, fixtures on the San Francisco Bay area’s thriving Latin jazz scene, offer up their third album, “This Could Be That”; song stylist extraordinaire Rebecca Kilgore collaborates with Ellen Vanderslice and Mike Horsfall on a program of original tunes on “Moonshadow Dance”; and Michael Spiro and Wayne Wallace delve into the folkloric history of Afro-Cuban music with La Orquesta Sinfonietta on “Canto America.”