Author's posts
New Music Monday for May 2, 2016
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. To record “Culcha Vulcha,” their 11th album and first true studio disc in eight years, Snarky Puppy decamped to a pecan orchard at the remote Sonic Ranch Studios in Tornillo, Texas, a five-minute walk from the Mexican border. The Texas-bred/Brooklyn-based collective used a week in …
New Music Monday for April 25, 2016
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Known for his charismatic performances, Israeli saxophonist-composer-bandleader Eli Degibri has recorded and performed extensively since the mid-1990s. He has been called “an exceptionally melodic improviser with a big, bold tenor tone” by Jazz Times, and “a bewitching fellow who shows impressive chops, as both a …
New Music Monday for April 18, 2016
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Ever since Joe Chambers made his recording debut on Freddie Hubbard’s classic LP, “Breaking Point,” he’s remained a nearly peerless jazz figure in terms of consummate musicianship. His career throughout the 1960s established Chambers as both a noteworthy hard-bop and avant-garde jazz drummer and as an …
New Music Monday for April 11, 2016
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. When Freddy Cole is asked why he is finally releasing a tribute to his legendary older brother, who left this world 50 years ago, his answer is hardly surprising. “Because I felt the time was right.” Anytime is the right time for a new Freddy Cole …
New Music Monday for April 4, 2016
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Singer Jane Monheit has had plenty of milestone moments in establishing herself as one of today’s best and most important vocalist-musicians. With her new CD, “The Songbook Sessions: Ella Fitzgerald”—the first to be released on her own Emerald City Records—the Long Island native has surprised …
New Music Monday for March 28, 2016
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Any chance that one has to hear a master musician in his or her preferred setting is a gift. For all the one-offs and ensemble-by-committee type of gigs that spring up, it is the reunion with familiar collaborators for a stint of a few nights that really …
New Music Monday for March 21, 2016
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. The life of a jazz musician tends to be an itinerant one. While traveling the world over the past three decades, trumpeter Jim Rotondi has formed a tenuous definition of the work “home”-sometimes it can mean a permanent residence, sometimes just a welcoming room for …
New Music Monday for March 14, 2016
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Jazz harmonica master Hendrik Meurkens, whose numerous CDs have established him as an important stylist in the world of Brazilian music, is releasing his first all straight ahead jazz album in 15 years. Jazz came first for Meurkens, long before the Brazilian bug caught him. His …