Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
There’s an old saying that a great jazz musician never plays a song the same way once. That could certainly be said of Jerry Bergonzi. He is an intellectual artist of uncompromising integrity and a bold, original composer. On his new disc, “Spotlight on Standards,” he returns to the organ-tenor trio format after a long hiatus from it. From the opening track, Cy Coleman’s “Witchcraft,” with its hypnotic organ vamp and bewitching chord substitutions Jerry gives the first eight bars, you know this isn’t going to be your parents’ organ-tenor gig. Bergonzi and his discmates, Ranato Chicco on organ and Andrea Michelutti on drums, take these standards down new harmonic paths and use them as a launching pad for fertile and impressive improvisation. The playing is always intense and distinctive, fresh and spontaneous.
Since 2002, vocalist Sara Gazarek and pianist Josh Nelson have nurtured an uncommonly strong musical bond. It’s no mere happenstance that Nelson played as a band member on all four of Gazarek’s albums, and she, in turn, sang on two of Nelson’s own recording projects. But over the past 18 months, this Los Angeles-based pair has taken their collaboration to a new level, touring extensively as a duo and developing a diverse repertoire that showcases their combined artistic maturation. Gazarek and Nelson recorded their new CD, “Dream in the Blue,” as a tribute to their extraordinary relationship. As Gazarek puts it, “We’ve spent the last decade and more writing together, arranging, recording, making silly videos; essentially growing up together, personally and musically.”
Also this week, Scott Tixier, whose violin playing has been lauded 
by many important and highly respected musicians, including Jean-Luc Ponty and Pat Metheny, unveils his second recording and his first in four years, “Cosmic Adventures”.
Venezuel
an pianist and composer Silvano Monasterios’ working trio is augmented with the great clarinetist Anat Cohen, saxman Troy Roberts and the colorful percussionist Roberto Quintero on “Partly Sunny”.
Identical twin saxophonists Dwayne and Dwight Bosman of St. Louis, who’ve shared stages with Hugh Masekela, Lester Bowie, Roy Ayers and Branford Marsalis, release their second hard bop affair, “When Lions Roar.”