Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
Shaped by years of collaboration, “Buckshot Blues” captures guitarist Steve Kovalcheck’s trio chemistry with the famed drummer Jeff Hamilton and bassist John Hamar. It highlights the trio’s unique blend of precision, spontaneity, and playfulness through thirteen mostly original tunes. Filled with soulful grooves and expressive blues inflections, Kovalcheck’s melodic clarity and improvisational storytelling shines through as he pays tribute to mentors and friends, including organist Akiko Tsuruga, their bandmate who was lost too soon.

A distinctive voice among a new breed of Hammond B-3 organ players on the jazz scene, Sam Yahel has earned the top spot in Downbeat’s International Critics Poll as a Talent Deserving of Recognition for many years in a row. Since moving to New York City in 1990, Yahel has worked with a string of notable jazz artists including Joshua Redman, Maceo Parker, Peter Bernstein, Bill Frisell, Norah Jones and Madeleine Peyroux, among others. As a solo artist, his work has garnered critical praise for its unique perspective in combining both his voice on piano and organ into one seamless thread. On his new work, “Quiet Flow,” he is joined by the potent rhythm section of drummer Bian Blade and bassist Larry Grenadier.

Also this week, saxophonist Chris Fagan’s new release, “Fortune Telling,” features his original compositions recorded in Brazil with some of Rio’s finest musicians; legendary Grammy-winning drummer Jeff Hamilton unveils his new trio with Tokyo-based pianist Tadataka Unno with “A New Chapter”; and “Daggerboard, the Skipper and Mike Clark” is the latest project from Daggerboard collaborators Erik Jekabon and Gregory Howe.