Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
Caesar Frazier is a true keeper of the B-3 grail, assuming the mantle of the great organists such as Jimmy Smith and Brother Jack McDuff and building upon their legacy to become one of today’s finest exponents of the instrument. From his years with Lou Donaldson through his time spent touring with Marvin Gaye, Frazier developed his own unique soulful style not just as an instrumentalist but as a composer as well. His new recording finds him in a quartet setting with a hand-picked group of the West Coast’s busiest players. Original tunes from Frazier’s pen rub elbows with standards from Nat Adderly, Benny Golson and others.
Tadd Dameron believed in finding the pretty notes to express his vision of how music should sound. His many compositions and arrangements were interpreted by the luminaries of the bebop era such as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Fats Navarro. Many of Dameron’s compositions also have lyrics which are the subject of a new tribute disc by singer Vanessa Rubin, “The Dream is You.” Ms. Rubin enlisted the help of an A-list of arrangers, all of whom are American jazz masters who were either contemporaries of Tadd’s or influenced by him. They include Frank Foster, Benny Golson, Jimmy Heath, Bobby Watson and one of Tadd’s home-town compatriots, Willie Smith.
Also this week, pianist and composer Amina Figarova celebrates the 20th anniversary of her band with “Road to the Sun”;
trumpeter Randy Brecker fronts the NDR Bigband of Hamburg with works composed from different periods of his career on “Randy Brecker Rocks,” which also features alto sax great David Sanborn, drummer Wolfgang Haffner and Ana Rovatti on tenor and soprano saxophones;
and the soulful jazz/funk organ trio out of Toronto, JV’s Boogaloo Squad, unveil their debut CD, “Going to Market.”