Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
Amina Figarova was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, and as a child studied to be a classical pianist. She came to the States in 1989 to complete her studies at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, where she met her husband flutist Bart Platteau. After more than a decade of working major U.S. jazz clubs, concert halls and festivals, the couple gained legal immigrant status in 2014. Amina introduces ten colorful, compelling new compositions performed by her touring sextet and guests on “Blue Whisper,” her 13th disc since her 1994 debut. Her deeply personal, highly evocative responses to social turmoil, distinctive personalities she’s encountered and universal transactions of life inform the music on the new release.
Oran Etkin moved from Israel to the United States at age four. He heard Louis Armstrong at age nine and became entranced by the trumpeter’s soulful sound, swing and melody. Armstrong inspired Etkin to search for a way to express himself through music with honesty and integrity. That search led him to Benny Goodman, a musician also raised in a Jewish immigrant home and transformed by hearing Armstrong. On his imaginative new tribute to Goodman, “What’s New: Reimagining Benny Goodman,” the clarinetist is inspired by two historic moments when Goodman used music to transform American society. The first was Goodman’s famous concert at the Palomar Ballroom in 1935, cited by historians as launching the swing era. And a few months later, the newly ordained King of Swing revolutionized society again forming America’s first mainstream integrated band with the addition of pianist Teddy Wilson to his trio.
Also this week, Jill Townsend and her big band honor the late Canadian saxophonist and composer Ross Taggart with “Legacy: the Music of Ross Taggart”; pianist Stephen Anderson of the University of North Carolina jazz faculty and his 360 Degree Jazz Initiative unveil their debut disc, “Distracted Society”; and trombonist Michael Dease has put together a new quintet for his sixth CD as a leader, “Decisions.”