Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
Over the past ten years, Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom has established itself as one of the most consistently inventive and hardest working bands in modern jazz. Fronted by the extraordinary drummer and composer Allison Miller and featuring violinist Jenny Scheinman, cornetist Kirk Knuffke, clarinetist Ben Goldberg, bassist Todd Sickafoose and pianist Myra Melford, the sextet has been embraced by both fans and music cognoscenti alike, regularly performing sold out shows and garnering critical praise around the world. The Wall Street Journal declared, “Boom Tic Boom has a razor-sharp precision that recalls classic drummer-led ensembles of 50 years ago—the music of Art Blakey, Art Taylor and Max Roach come to mind—but Ms. Miller’s band works from a diverse sonic palette that is unmistakably contemporary.” Their new CD, “Glitter Wolf,” was inspired by the collective need for community and self-acceptance in an incredibly unpredictable time.
Joe Lovano, widely acknowledged as one of the great tenor saxophonists of our time, has been a presence on ECM Records since 1981, appearing on key recordings with Paul Motian, Steve Kuhn, John Abercrombie and Marc Johnson. “Trio Tapestry,” introducing a new group with pianist Marilyn Crispell and drummer Carmen Castaldi, is his first as a leader for the label. An album of focused intensity and expressive beauty, it features a program of eleven new compositions that Joe calls “some of the most intimate and personal music I’ve recorded so far.” It draws upon Lovano’s history and development as a player who has addressed both jazz tradition and exploratory improvisation.
Also this week, trumpeter Ralph Alessi’s third recording for ECM, “Imaginary Friends,” presents him fronting his longtime working quintet in its first recording since 2010;
Downbeat Rising Star vibraphonist Behn Gillece investigates the parallax of perspectives created by the individual approaches of introversion and extroversion which comprise the “Parallel Universe”;
and saxophonist Ken Fowser is supported by an all-star group, including organist Brian Charette, guitarist Ed Cherry, trombonist Steve Davis and trumpeter Joe Magnarelli on “Right On Time.”