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New Music Monday for May 16, 2022
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify “Late Bloomin’ Jazzman,” the newest album by vocalist and songwriter Mark Winkler, is an homage to growing older and all the blessings and drawbacks that come with it. The album is Winkler’s 20th as a leader. He wrote lyrics to eight of the 12 tunes, and covers a lot of …
New Music Monday for May 9, 2022
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify On “Glass Spheres,” 24-year-old Nashville bassist and composer Chris Mondak looks to the future while showing a deep reverence for the jazz tradition’s rich past. Mondak, who was born in Venezuela, is a 2020 graduate of the New England Conservatory, where he trained with jazz legends Cecil McBee, …
New Music Monday for May 2, 2022
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify Trumpeter, composer and author Jeremy Pelt has certainly never shied away from themed albums, so one might expect something cinematic from the enigmatically-titled “Soundtrack.” However, as Pelt himself explains, “I’ve certainly done plenty of conceptual albums, but in this case there’s nothing I’m on a soapbox about. It’s …
New Music Monday for April 25, 2022
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify Regarded as one of Africa’s first international superstars, Zenzile Miriam Makeba elevated the spirit of a continent, including her native South Africa. Her courage, however, was met with three decades of political exile from her homeland followed by blacklisting in the U.S. after her marriage to …
New Music Monday for April 18, 2022
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify There are a mere handful of guitarists that have changed the way we think about the guitar over the past five or six decades. Pat Martino is perhaps one of the greatest and best-known of those icons. His life story was the very definition of the term “genius.” …
New Music Monday for April 11, 2022
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify Grammy-nominated vocalist Catherine Russell’s deep connection to her chosen material is part of a calling. As the daughter of pioneering and legendary musicians, pianist/orchestra leader/composer/arranger Luis Russell, and bassist/guitarist/vocalist Carline Ray, Catherine was born into jazz royalty. When asked to characterize her new album, “Send for Me,” …
New Music Monday for April 4, 2022
Larry Goldings, Peter Bernstein and Bill Stewart celebrate over three decades as a trio with “Perpetual Pendulum,” a program combing their clever originals with fresh takes on jazz classics. The disc is also their debut release on Smoke Sessions Records, which has some historical significance related to their origins as trio. Smoke Jazz …
New Music Monday for March 28, 2022
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify “Dave Brubeck Trio—Live from Vienna 1967” is a newly-discovered recording of the extraordinary evening when the iconic Dave Brubeck Quartet was forced to take the stage as a trio. On November 12th of that year, the Quartet was nearing the end of their last tour of Europe. …