Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
Some people are obsessed with Wayne Shorter’s music. Many of his compositions, which are known for their complex harmonies and memorable melodies, have become jazz standards. When two musicians of the caliber of guitarist Dave Askren and sax player Jeff Benedict team up to record an album of Shorter tunes, the result is eminently gratifying. On “Paraphernalia,” their third recording as co-leaders, Askren and Benedict present a program of Wayne’s music from his work mostly from the 1960s, culled from his solo albums and his recordings with Miles Davis and Weather Report.
World-renowned guitarist Al Di Meola welcomes a new decade with an ambitious follow-up to his 2013 Beatles tribute album with the sophomore homage, “Across the Universe.” His exquisite mastery of the fretboard is equal only to his appreciation of the Beatles legacy that has inspired generations of both musicians and music fans with their recording catalog. A retrospective of Di Meola’s nearly 50-year career expressed through his virtuosic arrangement of 14 Beatles songs, the new CD journeys alongside one of America’s foremost guitarists as he revisits classic hits and more obscure tunes written by the Fab Four.
Also this week, the tunes of legendary bassist Sam Jones are highlighted with “The TNek Jazz Quintet Plays Sam Jones”;
the JUNO-nominated Canadian jazz quartet Peripheral Vision celebrates more than ten years of collaboration with “Irrational Revelation and Mutual Humiliation”;
and saxophonist and composer Dave Glasser presents risk-taking new compositions grounded in the jazz tradition on “Hypocrisy Democracy,” with Andy Milne, Ben Allison and Matt Wilson.