Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
With 40 years of professional recording under his belt, John Scofield is one of the most distinctive and versatile modern jazz guitarists; his capacity to play in fusion, blues, bebop, county, avant garde and pop settings while retaining his distinctive voice is peerless. In addition to leading numerous ensembles and recording more than three dozen albums as a leader, Scofield has played with a who’s who of jazz greats that include Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, Chet Baker, Joe Henderson and Herbie Hancock. For his new disc, “Past Present,” he updates his classic quartet of the early ‘90s with saxophonist Joe Lovano and drummer Bill Stewart by recruiting Larry Grenadier to fill the bass chair. Scofield describes the CD as “futuristic blues,” on which he and Lovano craft unison melodies before the two separate, then intertwine invigorating improvisations.
In an unlikely pairing of piano and banjo in 2006, Chick Corea and Bela Fleck joined together to explore the unexplored. Their project, joining one of jazz’s most prominent instruments with one relegated to ‘miscellaneous’ in critics polls, was uncharted territory. But Corea—an admirer of the banjoist’s bluegrass-meets-bebop band the Flecktones—and Fleck, long inspired by Corea’s Return to Forever, went into the studio with all new material. The result was not only deemed one of the best records of 2007 but also sparked multi-year international live tours for sold-out crowds. The most compelling performances culled from those years of touring comprise the new two-disc set, “Two.”
Also this week, Grammy-recognized contemporary jazz luminaries Bob James and Nathan East join together for “The New Cool”; singer-songwriter Lizz Wright unveils her first release in five years, “Lean In”; and the pairing of the Beegie Adair Trio with saxophonist Don Aliquo is “Too Marvelous For Words.”