Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
On “Glass Spheres,” 24-year-old Nashville bassist and composer Chris Mondak looks to the future while showing a deep reverence for the jazz tradition’s rich past. Mondak, who was born in Venezuela, is a 2020 graduate of the New England Conservatory, where he trained with jazz legends Cecil McBee, Dave Holland and Bob Moses. They instilled in him a deep respect for jazz history, but also a keen desire to pursue the genre’s newest frontiers. The disc, recorded in Nashville’s storied Sound Emporium studio, explores multiple musical styles including swing, bebop, second-line, avant-garde, and even pop.
Sinne Eeg is considered the preeminent jazz vocalist in Scandinavia. She’s not only a brilliant vocalist, she is also a great songwriter and the recipient of numerous awards. For her latest project, “Under the Stars,” she is the special guest of the San Gabriel 7, a prolific and inventive recording ensemble whose sound jazz journalist Scott Yanow describes as “a bit like a big band, or perhaps a little like Tower of Power, a rock group or a bop sextet.” The original compositions on the new album reflect Ms. Eeg’s out-of-the-box writing style.
Also this week, multi-instrumentalist and composer/arranger Gabriel Mark Hasselbach delves into B3 organ territory on “Mid Century Modern Vol. 3”;
guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel and pianist Jean-Paul Brodbeck explore the work of classical composer Frederic Chopin on “The Chopin Project”;
and the teen jazz trio J3, featuring multi-instrumentalist siblings Justin-Lee and Jamie-Lee Shultz along with acclaimed bassist Jaden Baker, debut with “Opus 1.”