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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.” Before his passing last year, the Alternative Guitar Summit honored him and his enormous contribution to jazz with a set of studio recordings by 14 great guitarists playing selections from his imaginative and varied catalog of compositions. “Honoring Pat Martino, Vol. 1” includes performances by Peter Bernstein, Russell Malone, Sheryl Bailey, Ed Cherry, Nir Felder, Fareed Haque, Oz Noy, Adam Rogers, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Rez Abbasi, Joel Harrison and Paul Bollenback.
The Greyboy Allstars have no time for idle hands. The San Diego five-piece chose to use the shutdown to lock-in wisely and broadcast a live-stream series, which notches up their own jazz-funk and boogaloo narrative. Originally aired as a four-part episodic series, “Get a Job: Music from the Original Broadcast Series Soul Dream” is a 10-song set of unique, never-before-released covers that have become an integral part of the band’s famed live set for nearly three decades. The band, featuring Karl Denson on reeds, Elgin Park on guitar, Aaron Redfield on drums, Chris Stillwell on bass and Robert Walter on keyboards, takes on tunes by Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt, Gil Scott-Heron, George Harrison, Gary Bartz, Dr. Lonnie Smith and Burt Bacharach.
Also this week, jazz vocalist and educator Kelly Eisenhour is joined by the Jeff Hamilton Trio on “I Just Found Out About Love”;
“The Lights are Always On” is pianist/composer Lynne Arriale’s 16th album as a leader, a suite of tunes that reflect the world-wide, life-changing events of the past two years;
and Atlanta-based drummer Dave Potter and Retro Groove focus on popular music of the 1980s for their debut release.