Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
Trumpeter Jeremy Pelt’s latest project, “Woven,” is a fascinating album that fuses more traditional aspects of 21st-century jazz with the myriad possibilities of electronic synthesized sound. The full range of contemporary jazz can be found here, from neo-bop, hard-driving rhythms to touching intimate ballad utterances. But Pelt’s trumpet can also weave through electronic textures, creating a sonic landscape where the group’s kaleidoscope tone colors become a fundamental part of the melodic content.
Growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, Joe Alterman’s first musical passions were bluegrass and the blues. So it should come as no surprise that when the pianist started exploring the jazz pantheon, it wasn’t bebop modernists that lured him in but blues-rooted greats like Oscar Peterson, Ramsey Lewis, Les McCann, or Houston Person. Following on the heels of his 2023 disc documenting his close friendship and onstage partnership with McCann comes “Brisket for Breakfast,” a joyous live recording paring Alterman and his Atlanta-based trio with Mr. Person’s burly embrace of a tenor sound.
Also this week, “West By Northwest” is a swinging, melodious album from bass player Tom Wakeling and his quartet performed before a live audience at the amazing Ravenscroft Center in Scottsdale, Arizona; “Reincarnation of a Lovebird” is the newest from reedman Harry Drabkin, a faculty member at the Berklee College of Music in the ‘60s who traded his horns for a medical career and, after 30+ years, dusted off the cases and made a comeback while continuing to practice oncology part time; and it’s refreshing to start off the year with the kind of optimism the vibrant Liz Cole shares on her sublime, stylistically eclectic debut album, “I Want to Be Happy.”