Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify 
 Steve Turre was passed the jazz torch early in his career by some of the music’s greatest masters—Art Blakey, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Woody Shaw and Ray Charles, among others. In recent years he’s kindled the same flame in a younger crop of musicians. On his new album, “Generations,” the trombonist brings the eras together, inviting still-vital legends to join a gifted band of rising stars to pay tribute to the elders who have helped shaped his sound. The disc features Steve’s own son drummer Orion Turre, as well as Wallace Roney, Jr., whose late father was a close friend and collaborator of Turre’s. In addition, the youthful core band includes pianist Isaiah J. Thompson and bassist Corcoran Holt. Veterans James Carter, Ed Cherry, Buster Williams and Lenny White provide the balance between youth and age.

     Pianist and composer Amina Figarova seeks to inspire a more optimistic and positive future on her new album, “Joy,” striving to move beyond the darkness of the last few years. It’s also a return to the acoustic piano setting following the groove-heavy electronic excursion of her previous project. The album reconvenes her regular collaborators: flautist Bart Platteau, trumpeter Alex Pope Norris, saxophonist Wayne Escoffery, bassist Yasushi Nakamura, with Rudy Royston and Brian Richburg, Jr. sharing drum duties. This meeting of old friends contributes greatly toward embodying the warm spirits that Figarova aimed for with “Joy.”

Also this week, “Keyed Up” marks Chicago guitarist Bobby Broom’s 14^th album as a leader, expanding his trio with the addition of Chicago keyboard whiz Justin Dillard;

 drummer Steve Gadd reunites with his friends from his Gadd Gang days, Eddie Gomez and Ronnie Cuber for a production with the multiple Grammy Award-winning WDR Big Band, “Center Stage”;

     and drummer Richard Baratta takes us on another imaginative, jazz-filled trip to the movies with “Music in Film: The Sequel.”