Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
Ahmad Jamal’s
story and journey through music from his birthplace of Pittsburgh is nothing if not astonishing. He was inspired early on after meeting virtuoso pianist Art Tatum and became a professional musician at age 17, forming quartets and then trios. His 1958 disc, “At the Pershing,” spent 108 weeks on the Billboard chart and spawned the jukebox hit “Poinciana.” Over the next four decades, Jamal would record consistently, exploring a range of settings that included electric groups and strings, but throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s he really defined himself as a master of the acoustic piano trio. At the age of 86, he remains at the peak of his creative powers. His new CD, “Marseilles,” carries a very personal expression of the sincere and longstanding mutual admiration that has existed between the pianist/composer—a recipient of the highly prestigious Chevalier De L’Ordre Des Arts Et Des Lettres—and French audiences.
Stanton Moore is busy all the time. Besides his solo projects, studio and TV work, and teaching, he’s the drummer of Galactic, the funky New Orleans conglomeration now in its third decade of touring, and he still finds time to record and travel with his trio. The trio had a new record ready to record in 2015 when they heard of Allen Toussaint’s passing. The New Orleans producer, songwriter, arranger, bandleader, pianist, singer and all-around figure of elegance had been a vital, active presence in the city since the 1950s. Moore immediately shelved his planned disc and began working up pieces of Toussaint’s vast repertoire. Supplementing the trio with some of New Orleans’ living legends, they reimagined Toussaint’s songs, conceptualizing and building out an album on the fly. Special guests on the resulting disc, “With You in Mind,” include Nicholas Payton, Donald Harrison, Cyril Neville, Trombone Shorty and Maceo Parker.
Also this week, celebrated guitarist Mark Whitfield, who has performed with Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Herbie Hancock and others over his nearly three decade career, is captured “Live & Uncut” at Manhattan’s Rockwood Music Hall.
Los Angeles-based trumpeter Ron Francis Blake steps away from the sidelines with his debut, “Assimilation”.
Singer Patti LaBelle unveils a program of jazz standards on “Bel Hommage.”