Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
As a pianist, composer, and a fearless explorer of worldwide musical landscapes, Roger Davidson is uncategorizable, yet distinctive. Whether the music is classical, Latin, Brazilian, klezmer, sacred or jazz, he finds the common threads. Roger was born in Paris to a French mother and an American father. The family moved to New York where his curiosity about the world at large took wing. In time, he developed a special passion for Brazil. Roger has performed and recorded there and written volumes of Brazilian-flavored songs. The latest batch are featured on his new CD, “Music From the Heart,” his second recorded collaboration with fellow Brazilophile Hendrik Meurkens, a wizard on jazz vibraphone and harmonica.
Reedman Jacques Schwarz-Bart’s new release, “Hazzan,” is a jazz creation embracing Jewish liturgical music, improvisational sequences and infectious rhythms. The name Hazzan means cantor in the Jewish tradition. It came to Jacques from a rabbi who was commenting on one of his performances. He said, “When you played, your notes sounded like a prayer. You are a hazzan on your saxophone.” This was three years after Jacques’ father passed away, and he decided to honor his father’s memory by creating a project revolving around jazz music and hazzanout (the art of chanting Jewish prayers). “…It became clear that these powerful ancient melodies lent themselves to impressionistic harmonization and could be enhanced with infectious rhythms from the African diaspora (USA, Afro Caribbean, Gnawa). Armed with these founding elements, I researched Jewish traditions from Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, selecting songs of contrasting colors to paint a mystical, uplifting fresco.”
Also this week, trumpeter Joe Magnarelli showcases the compositions of Tadd Dameron on “If You Could See Me Now”;
reedmen Larry McKenna and Bootsie Barnes honor Philadelphia’s jazz legacy with “The More I See You”;
and trombonist John Fedchock and his quartet are captured live at Havana Nights in Virginia Beach, Virginia, on “Reminiscence.”