Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
Trumpet legend Eddie Henderson celebrates the 50th anniversary of his debut album as a leader, 1973’s “Realization,” with the exhilarating new release, “Witness to History.” The stellar quintet on this album bridges that half-century of music, starting with lifelong collaborator George Cables returning once again to the piano bench. Henderson’s colleague in the Cookers, alto saxophonist Donald Harrison, and his more recent collaborator bassist Gerald Cannon, have also appeared on the trumpeter’s recent string of releases for Smoke Sessions. They’re joined by legendary drummer Lenny White, who has reunited with Henderson in the studio for the first time since that 1973 disc.
The celebrated Cuban-Canadian composer and piano master Hilario Duran brings the full scope of his artistry and the depth of knowledge of musical genres to his new release, “Cry Me a River,” his first big band recording in 17 years. Leading his nineteen-piece ensemble and special guests Paquito D’Rivera and Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez, the Grammy-nominated and Juno Award-winning Duran actively throws overboard melodic, harmonic, and structural hooks that have become expressly blunted through overuse, building big band charts that bloom in color and texture and atmospheric beauty.
Also this week, effervescent pianist Miki Yamanaka and her stellar New York trio mates Tyrone Allen and Jimmy Macbride are fortified by saxophonist Mark Turner on “Shades of a Rainbow”; Eastern Iowa guitarist and composer Dan Padley’s quartet on his new project, “The Walking Hills,” includes Nolan Schroeder, Blake Shaw, and Christopher Jensen; and Cuban-born pianist and composer Harold Lopez-Nussa collaborates with Snarky Puppy’s Michael League on “Timba a la Americana.”