Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
For the better part of a decade, acclaimed trombonist, producer and composer Delfeayo Marsalis has spent most Wednesday nights at the helm of his dynamic Uptown Jazz Orchestra’s residency at Snug Harbor in New Orleans. With “Jazz Party,” Marsalis’ seventh studio album as a leader, he delivers an original compositions-heavy set of music that showcases the same exuberant energy of those shows, complete with modernized twists on New Orleans songbook gems, and swinging, groove-infused homages to the contributions of modern jazz masters. “Jazz, the indigenous American music, is a music of celebration and optimism,” he explains. “The Uptown Jazz Orchestra is such a fun band that I wanted to capture its uniqueness…really capture the joy that is a central trademark of the band.”
After a long and storied career, saxophonist Brian Scanlon is releasing his debut CD, “Brain Scan.” Scanlon is a first-call studio musician who has worked on dozens of movies and television shows over the past 32 years. He’s also busy working as a sideman on recording projects for some of the top names in jazz. But he is perhaps best known for his work with Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band, for which he holds the first tenor sax chair. Scanlon’s writing is stylistically diverse but he’s particularly drawn to Latin and funk grooves.
Also this week, Bay Area trumpeter Erik Jekabson, who has played with the likes of Galactic, John Mayer and Kamasi Washington, unveils his third album with his sextet, “One Note at a Time”;
renowned Russian pianist and composer Yelena Eckemoff focuses her music on “Nocturnal Animals” on her new disc, recorded in Norway;
and Omaha-based guitarist Aaron Stroessner digs into his love of jazz with his debut, “Haymarket Station.”