Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
Antonio Adolfo is one of the premier pianists, composers and arrangers to emerge from Brazil. A multi-Latin Grammy and Grammy nominee, Adolfo is an internationally recognized Latin Jazz star. Now, after more than 50 years of friendship and admiration, he has set his sights on an album dedicated to the music of Milton Nascimento,”BruMa: Celebrating Milton Nascimento.” “His compositions broke traditional harmonic and rhythmic patterns, with his modalism and some natural odd rhythmic meters, all in a spontaneous, intuitive and natural way,” Antonio explains.
“and then they played…” is the debut recording of HGTS, the Massachusetts-based band featuring pianist/trumpeter Jeff Holmes, saxophonist Felipe Salles, drummer Thomas Giampietro, and bassist Fumi Tumita. Colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the area of Jazz and African American Music Studies, the quartet’s project has been described by Randy Brecker as “a first-class endeavor with wonderfully melodic yet complex original compositions and great playing.” Jeff Coffin describes it as “radiant music and gorgeous tunes.”
Also this week, drummer Steve Fidyk is joined by trumpet master Joe Magnarelli and tenor titan Xavier Perez on “Battle Lines”;
trumpeter Derrick Gardner has gathered musicians from all over North America for his Big dig! Band on “Still I Rise”;
and the legendary Tower of Power unleashes a new set of funky tunes on “Step Up.”