Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify 
Drummer Joe Farnsworth sets out on a bold new path in answer to the question, “In What Direction Are You Headed?” The new disc marks a turning point in his career, as he’s assembled a new quintet featuring not his renowned forebears but esteemed talents from his own generation and a younger, rising class. While Joe has honed his skills through decades of work with some of jazz’s greatest elders—iconic names like McCoy Tyner, Pharoah Sanders, Horace Silver, Benny Golson, Cedar Walton, Curtis Fuller, Johnny Griffin and others—in recent years, he’s seen many of his mentors pass away. His new stellar all-star quintet includes guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, pianist Julius Rodriguez, and bassist Robert Hurst.

Bass player Dewayne Pate is so busy working as a sideman that it’s taken him 14 years and a pandemic lockdown to find the time to record his second album as a leader. He’s a master of many styles and has performed around the world with many top acts, like Arturo Sandoval, Huey Lewis, Robben Ford, Boz Scaggs, Maria Muldaur and Tower of Power, to name a few. “On the Upside” comprises funk, blues and fusion jazz tunes performed with a variety of instrumentation, and features an all-star band that includes Ford, Barry Finnerty, Ray Obiedo, Dennis Chambers, Norbert Stachel, Marc Russo and Michael Spiro.

Also this week, the 6^th album in the Smalls Living Masters series finds tenor titan George Coleman “Live at Smalls Jazz Club,” in the company of pianist Spike Wilner, bassist Peter Washington and drummer Joe Farnsworth;

“Conversations With Birds,” the sixth recording by saxophonist Michael O’Neill, brings his expressive, lyrical playing to a beautiful range of original compositions;

 and guitarist/composer Dan Wilson gathers hope and inspiration from ancestral wisdom, dedicated to the enduring quality of the human spirit, throughout a curated selection of 12 songs on “Things Eternal.”

Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
As difficult times often beget new beginnings, the Covid-19 quagmire gave birth to alto saxophonist Eric Alexander. To some, a tenor-to-alto switch may not seem to be a newsworthy matter, but for the initiated, it’s the stuff of headlines. An inveterate tenor at the apex of the scene for more than three decades, Eric put the alto away in his teen years and never looked back. “But with the dearth of opportunities to play during the pandemic, I started to work on it,” he confesses. He successfully pitched the idea of using his second saxophone-with-strings project as a debut on alto.

Arturo O’Farrill returns to his first love—the piano—on his remarkable new Blue Note album, “Legacies.” Renowned as a composer, arranger and bandleader, here the 8-time Grammy-winner puts the emphasis back on his striking pianistic abilities with a 9-song set that juxtaposes stunning solo piano flights and dynamic trio performances with O’Farrill accompanied by his son, drummer Zack O’Farrill, and bassist Liany Mateo. The repertoire includes pieces by Bud Powell, Monk, Herbie Hancock, Carla Bley, and his father Chico O’Farrill.

Also this week, “What’s Trending” is Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Leo Sidran’s eighth solo recorded, a hip, deeply personal exploration of how music can make life more livable in difficult times;

baritone saxophonist David Larsen’s “The Peplowski Project” features the great clarinetist and saxophonist Ken Peplowski on a mix of jazz  standards and Larsen originals;

and “The Trio—Vol. 3” is the newest recording by pianist and composer Dave Bass, a lyrical, freewheeling buffet of solid originals together with an eclectic assortment of compositions ranging from the Great American Songbook to the jazz songbook.