Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
Bassist and composer Gabriel Espinosa’s “The Brazilian Project” is the realization of a lifelong devotion to the music that first stirred his imagination in the 1960s when the sounds of Jobim, Joao Donato and Sergio Mendes reshaped the global jazz landscape. Raised in Mexico on boleros and the Beatles, Gabriel later found in bossa nova a language of melodic grace and rhythmic subtlety that would define his artistic path through Berklee, North Texas State, and to his present home in Iowa. For his eighth album, his bass is set aside while his compositions are brought vividly to life by a Brazil-based nonet, with scintillating arrangements by trombonist Rafael Rocha and flugelhornist Bruno Santos.
Pianist Ted Rosenthal offers up yet another side of his rich, expansive approach to the jazz piano with the release of “The Good Old Days.” The capstone of Rosenthal’s monumental tetralogy, Trios In 4 Acts, it finds him leading his two longtime trios in putting a contemporary twist on early jazz styles. The album also features joyful cameos on two tracks by the late, great clarinetist, Ken Peplowski.
Also this week, “Sangu” is Arturo Sandoval at is most fearless and deeply rooted, a powerful return to the electrifying pulse of Afro-Cuban rhythms; “Suit Yourself” extends singer Judith Owen’s exploration of jazz and blues, recorded in New Orleans surrounded by her faithful Gentlemen Callers and the J.O. Big Band; and guitarist Juan Carlos Quintero’s 13th album, “The Story of Love,” brings to life romantic Latin classics from the 1950s and ‘60s.