Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. 
Clovis Nicolas has been an important voice on the New York music scene since his arrival from Paris in the early 2000s. Having already established himself as a first-call bassist in Europe, he quickly garnered attention with many of the music’s most noted players, including Peter Bernstein, Frank Wess, Joe Magnarelli and Behn Gillece. The concept behind his new CD, “Freedom Suite Ensuite,” came from a succession of gigs that Nicolas participated in with a two saxophone quartet with bass and drums and no piano or guitar. It’s a tribute of sorts to the musician who exemplifies playing free within the form, saxophone great Sonny Rollins. He has reworked Rollin’s classic “Freedom Suite,” for the disc along with original compositions and standards.
On “Modern Lore,” Julian Lage’s second studio recording with his trio, the composer and guitarist focuses on the groove, building his melodies and solos around the work of the prodigious rhythm section of bassist Scott Colley and drummer Kenny Wolleson. It finds him playfully flipping the script he followed on his acclaimed 2016 disc, “Arclight.” “Last time it was specifically a combination of the electric guitar being a lead voice interacting with those pre-bop songs,” Lage recalls. “I wanted to do a jazz record the way I had always craved to do one.” This time he incorporated the sensibility, if not the outright sound of early rock and roll—a similarly hybrid form driven by rhythm, personality and a passion for the electric guitar.
Also this week, Cedar Rapids native Pat Daugherty leads his New York Electric Piano into their 15th year of existence with “State of the Art”.
Composer and arranger Bob Washut, long-time faculty member and one-time head of the University of Northern Iowa jazz department, leads his Dodectet on a “Journey to Knowhere”.
Puerto Rican-born tenor saxophonist and composer Roy McGrath’s new CD, “Remembranzas,” features ei
ght original compositions.