Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
Drummer Mark Giuliana has been in the vanguard of drummers creating a new vernacular on the instrument, blending virtuosity on acoustic drums with artfully deployed electronic beats and processing. He was chosen as Best Jazz Drummer in Modern Drummer magazine’s Readers Poll this year, while DownBeat dubbed him a Rising Star in its Critics Poll. Along with leading his own groups, Giuliana has appeared on a string of acclaimed recordings with others, including Brad Mehldau, John Scofield, Lionel Loueke, and Donny McCaslin, and was a prime mover of David Bowie’s multiple Grammy Award-winning swan song. The drummer’s new CD, “Jersey,” is the second release from the Mark Giuliana Quartet.
Hilario Duran makes a triumphant musical homecoming on his new CD, “Contumbao.” Internationally recognized as a jazz pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader of the highest order, the Cuban-Canadian has been based in Toronto for the past two decades, but his musical heart and soul have remained closely connected to the land of his birth. Last November, Duran returned to Havana and set up shop in the famed EGREM recording studio, the most storied such facility on the island where, in the 1980s, he had recorded hundreds of sessions with other artists and his band Perspectiva. A cast of musical heavyweights worked their magic on 11 new original Duran compositions.
Also this week is a second batch of previously unreleased recordings from the Woody Shaw-Louis Hayes Quintet, “The Tour Volume two,” recorded on a European tour between 1976 and 1977.
A reunion of composer/arranger Vince Men
doza and the WDR Big Band of Cologne, “Homecoming,” recorded live in concert in 2014.
The fourth release from the Verve Jazz Ensemble, “Swing-a-Nova,” featuring guest trumpeter Tatum Greenblatt.