Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
Saxophonist, composer, arranger and bandleader Kamasi Washington calls his new disc, “Fearless Movement,” his dance album. “Dancing is movement and expression,” he explains, “and in its way it’s the same thing as music—expressing your spirit through your body.” Dance as an embodied form of expression signals a shift in focus for Washington. Where previous albums dealt with cosmic ideas and existential concepts, the latest one focuses in on the everyday, an exploration of life on earth. The change of focus is due in large part to the birth of Kamasi’s first child a few years ago.
Decorated pianist, composer, arranger, bandleader and bona fide Latin music legend Oscar Hernandez is perhaps best known to modern-day audiences as the leader and musical director of the Spanish Harlem Orchestra. With Hernandez at the helm, the 13-piece all-star salsa big band has garnered 3 Grammy Awards and released eight critically-acclaimed albums. He first recorded with his band Alma Libre in 2016. The new release “No Words Needed” is the band’s third disc and adds ten new compositions to Oscar’s already expansive and wide-ranging repertoire.
Also this week, trumpeter Etienne Charles unveils his first big band release, “Creole Orchestra,” a riveting array of Caribbean rhythms drawn from several different commissions and projects; five-time Grammy nominee Karrin Allyson adds to her long list of Brazilian repertoire and recordings with “A Kiss for Brazil,” this time including a special pairing with the legendary singer, composer and guitarist Rosa Passos; and “Time Has Changed” is the second release to feature the warm, soulful sound of award-winning trumpeter and composer Win Pongsakorn.
When the 18-time Grammy Award-winning banjoist Bela Fleck speaks of his years-long collaboration with the late pianist Chick Corea, he can sound like a bashful student musician, still obviously in awe of the jazz titan whose impact transformed him as a teenager in the ‘70s. “Remembrance” is a new double album which serves as a moving final document of the profound creative and personal rapport that Fleck and Corea first showcased in 2007. It’s also a crucial addendum to Corea’s legacy, featuring three of his previously unreleased compositions as well as five short free improvisations, recorded live in concert in 2019 and via traded sound files in the midst of the Covid pandemic.
“Cubop Lives!” is the latest release by multi-faceted pianist Zaccai Curtis. As a musician who is so deeply steeped in the jazz and bebop tradition and so vivaciously immersed in the worlds of Afro-Cuban jazz, Curtis found himself wanting to pay homage to the great musicians in whose steps he has trod who brought together the distinct fusion of these musical cultures. The album title holds manifold meaning as it pays tribute to the music that has come before it, Cubop referring to the cultural and musical fusion of Cuban music and bebop.
