Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
With the release o
f “One for Marian,” New York-based pianist, composer and bandleader Roberta Piket shines a warm, loving light on an extraordinary but underappreciated aspect of the career of the beloved pianist and public radio host Marian McPartland–her vast body of work as a composer. An uncommonly probing improviser in both free and straight-ahead settings, Piket came up with the idea for the recording after putting together a concert of her arrangements of some of McPartland’s music that she performed at the 2014 Wall Street Jazz Festival. The disc features a stellar line-up including Steve Wilson on sax and flute, Virginia Mayhew on tenor sax and clarinet and bassist Harvie S. Singer Karrin Allyson is also a special guest on one tune.
John Beasley has shared stages with some of the most important names in jazz during his three-decade career. From his days as a member of Freddie Hubbard’s quintet and one of Miles Davis’ last touring bands to his role as music director for Jazz Day galas for the Thelonious Monk Institute, Beasley has had first-hand involvement with the genre’s never-ending evolution. As the centennial of Monk’s birth rapidly approaches, Beasley—pianist, conductor and arranger—has grappled with the composer’s legacy with his versatile big band riffing on the wit and unmistakable architecture of the Monk songbook with irrepressible energy and swinging abandon on “MONK’estra, Volume 1.”
Also this week,
Chilean-born vocalist, guitarist and composer Camila Meza blends jazz with her broad musical world that includes Latin American, Brazilian, folk and pop on her fourth disc as a leader, “Traces”.
Guitarist Charlie Hunter’s new collection of songs is steeped in the blues and R&B on the whimsically titled “Everybody Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Mouth”.
Saxophon
ist Ed Calle follows up his 2015 Latin Grammy-winner with an array of jazz styles spanning blazing bop to the sound of New Orleans on “360.”