Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
Celebrating more than twenty-five years together as jazz’s preeminent organ group, Mike LeDonne’s Groover Quartet’s broad repertoire choice, swinging ethos, and dynamic performance style has helped establish them as peerless in their standard bearing of this classic jazz style. Featuring LeDonne on Hammond B3 organ, Eric Alexander on tenor saxophone, Peter Bernstein on guitar and Joe Farnsworth on drums, the quartet arrived at the wonderfully intimate club, The Side Door, last year to record a new live album, “Turn It Up.” As ever, the band members showed their virtuosity and unique styles, whilst proving once again that the Groover Quartet in full flow is something to behold.
“For Dinah” is a deeply personal tribute from Grammy-winning vocalist Ledisi to her lifelong hero, the legendary but too often overlooked Dinah Washington. Produced and arranged by Christian McBride, the album blends Ledisi’s signature soul with Washington’s bold spirit, reclaiming space for a pioneer who made it possible for women like her to thrive. Standout collaborations include a duet with Grammy-winning vocalist Gregory Porter and appearances by top-tier musicians like Paul Jackson, Jr. and rising star Michael King.
Also this week, tenor saxophonist JD Allen sets aside his recent modernist experiments and heads straight to the heart with an album made up entirely of ballads from the Great American Songbook on “Love Letters”; Chicago and Milwaukee-based Affinity Trio, consisting of trumpeter Eric Jacobson, pianist Pamela York and bassist Clay Schaub, presents a set of six classics and three originals with the sophisticated and absorbing “New Outlook”; and the Gabriel Alegria Afro-Peruvian Sextet celebrates two decades together with “El Muki,” standing as a testament of the profound essence of Afro-Peruvian jazz.