Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
Following on from his previous jazz big band releases, West Australian composer/arranger Myles Wright releases his first full-length album “Gamer”—a selection of retro video game music arranged for an expanded, 24-piece big band. Six years in the making, the album features reinventions of well-known video game classics such as the 1991 Nintendo release Super Mario World, composed by Japanese video game music legend Koji Kondo, and some lesser-known titles such as the 1988 Amiga 500 release of Ghouls & Ghosts, composed by Tim Follin. There are also four outings from Follin’s 1993 game soundtrack to Plok.
Hot Club of Los Angeles presents “Nova,” the third release from the celebrated ‘nuevo Django’ ensemble that’s been hailed by none other than Jackson Brown as “an L.A. Treasure.” Formed in 2011, HCLA brings excitement, irresistible swing and raw talent to its take on gypsy jazz, a hybrid style pioneered by Belgian guitarist Django Reinhardt and the Quintette du Hot Club de France in 1930’s Paris. Their new disc is a collection of 15 varied numbers ranging from classic and contemporary gypsy jazz, bossa nova, French chanson and traditional Roma fare to film soundtrack, jazz standards and some originals.
Also this week, the Chicago-based Afro-Caribbean Jazz Collective create a unique and exciting listening experience on “Fiesta at Caroga”; the Indianapolis-based Rob Dixon/Steve Allee Quintet offers up “Standards Deluxe,” a well-rounded and consistently exiting set of vintage songs and new originals; and keyboardist Ethan Iverson’s “Technically Acceptable” is a far-ranging new project that presents two different trios performing a set of striking new Iverson originals.