Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
Three-time Grammy-nominated vocalist Catherine Russell presents her first live album, “Catherine Russll—Live at Jazz at Lincoln Center,” captured during a special weekend at the Appel Room with New York’s Central Park as scenic backdrop. Invited to perform for JALC’s 2023-2024 season theme “Community and Consciousness,” Russell crafted a program honoring The Hot Club of New York, a community of enthusiasts who gather weekly to listen to vintage jazz and blues on 78rpm shellac records, assembling lesser-known gems originally recorded by Hot Lips Page, Cab Calloway, Helen Humes, Eddie Barefield, Tiny Grimes, and her father Luis Russell, among others.

“Any Time After Now” is the new album from bassist, composer, and bandleader Ben Wolfe, featuring vibraphonist Joel Ross, pianist Sullivan Fortner, saxophonist Chris Lewis, and drummer Aaron Kimmel. Comprised entirely of Wolfe’s original compositions, the music was shaped across a three-night engagement at Dizzy’s Club in New York City before being captured on a single, highly organic day in the studio. The album continues Wolfe’s run of critically acclaimed work, praised by The New York Times, DownBeat, and the Wall Street Journal for its sophisticated, swinging sound.

Also this week, “Chris Hazelton in Rotation” is a new album from the Kansas City-based organist with Brett Jackson on sax, Peter Schlamb on vibes and John Kizilarmut on drums; Toronto-born saxophonist Pete Mills delivers a fast-paced swinging new recording, “This is Now,” alongside an outstanding lineup of familiar collaborators including drummer Matt Wilson, bassist Martin Wind, guitarist Pete McCann and rising piano phenom Kenny Banks Jr.; and veteran San Jose-based keyboardist Roosevelt Hoover III offers up “Backyard Blues.”

Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
Bassist and composer Gabriel Espinosa’s “The Brazilian Project” is the realization of a lifelong devotion to the music that first stirred his imagination in the 1960s when the sounds of Jobim, Joao Donato and Sergio Mendes reshaped the global jazz landscape. Raised in Mexico on boleros and the Beatles, Gabriel later found in bossa nova a language of melodic grace and rhythmic subtlety that would define his artistic path through Berklee, North Texas State, and to his present home in Iowa. For his eighth album, his bass is set aside while his compositions are brought vividly to life by a Brazil-based nonet, with scintillating arrangements by trombonist Rafael Rocha and flugelhornist Bruno Santos.

Pianist Ted Rosenthal offers up yet another side of his rich, expansive approach to the jazz piano with the release of “The Good Old Days.” The capstone of Rosenthal’s monumental tetralogy, Trios In 4 Acts, it finds him leading his two longtime trios in putting a contemporary twist on early jazz styles. The album also features joyful cameos on two tracks by the late, great clarinetist, Ken Peplowski.

Also this week, “Sangu” is Arturo Sandoval at is most fearless and deeply rooted, a powerful return to the electrifying pulse of Afro-Cuban rhythms; “Suit Yourself” extends singer Judith Owen’s exploration of jazz and blues, recorded in New Orleans surrounded by her faithful Gentlemen Callers and the J.O. Big Band; and guitarist Juan Carlos Quintero’s 13^th album, “The Story of Love,” brings to life romantic Latin classics from the 1950s and ‘60s.