Author's posts
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 …
New Music Monday for March 7, 2016
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. With “Honor Thy Fathers,” Laurence Hobgood embarks on a striking new chapter in what has already been a storied career. His 18-year tenure as musical director for singer Kurt Elling drew to a close in late 2013. He seizes that opportunity with a bold and original …
KCCK’s Featured CD for March 2016
The KCCK Featured CD for March is “All My Yesterdays” by the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. The first official release of the two-disc set documents the debut recordings of the Orchestra at the Village Vanguard in 1966, a Monday night gig which lasted for twelve years. Many of the charts were things that Jones had …
New Music Monday for February 29, 2016
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. On a cold February evening in 1966, jazz fans lined up around the block waiting for the doors to open at the famed Village Vanguard to catch a new big band formed by Thad Jones and Mel Lewis. Vanguard founder Max Gordon had invited the orchestra to …
New Music Monday for February 22, 2016
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. For more than four decades, drummer Peter Erskine has proven among the most consistently innovative and reliable masters of his instrument. The Grammy Award-winner has appeared on over 600 albums and film scores, more than 50 of those discs as leader or co-leader. He has collaborated with …