Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
Now entering its third decade as an ensemble, Hagiga’s founder, saxophonist Alon Ferber looked to Eddie Harris’s “Freedom Jazz Dance” as inspiration and a theme for their fourth recording, “Reflecting on Freedom.”  With an exciting three horn frontline—reminiscent of some Dave Douglas or Booker Little ensembles—they draw liberally from swing, Moroccan, funk and Brazilian music in creating their wide-ranging, highly personal sound. Farber’s bold compositions reflect his years at the forefront of Israel’s jazz scene, including co-founding the Israeli Jazz Orchestra and receiving the Prime Minister’s Award for Jazz Composers.

     2020 was a year in which dark clouds gathered early and threatened never to dispel. Silver linings were hard to come by but Hiromi was determined to find one. She found it onstage at the Blue Note Tokyo, which she helped bring back to life after it was silenced by the pandemic. Dreaming of a quintet with piano and strings, she composed “Silver Lining Suite,” pairing Hiromi’s virtuosic and emotive piano with a string quartet assembled by violinist Tatsuo Nishie, concertmaster of the New Japan Philharmonic. The results blur the lines between classical music and jazz, crafting a vibrant hybrid possessed of the fervent, rock-inspired energy and cinematic beauty that Hiromi has always instilled in her music.  

 Also this week, drummer Nate Smith unveils “Kinfolk 2: See the Birds,” the highly anticipated follow up to his 2017 Grammy nominee “Kinfolk”;

after 20 years of paying dues as a regional musician in multiple locations around the U.S., guitarist Lee Heerspink releases his debut album, “Monsters’ Impromptu”;

and the Toronto-based, New Orleans-inspired brass institution The Heavyweights Brass Band offers up its four album, “Stir Crazy.”

      Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
Mary LaRose has pushed the boundaries of the tradition of jazz vocalese into the post-bop world for many years, writing lyrics to the compositions and improvisations of Ornette Coleman, Anthony Braxton, and most often, Eric Dolphy. “I have felt connected to the music of Eric Dolphy since my earliest days in jazz,” she says. On her new album, “Out Here,” LaRose takes on the legacy of Dolphy as a composer in a focused way, joined by some of the most important young improvisers in the music today, including her partner/producer/reed player Jeff Lederer, cellist Tomeka Reid and drummer Matt Wilson.

     Born in Nova Scotia and a Montrealer since 2008, Beth McKenna is one of Montreal’s most versatile saxophonists, bandleaders, and composers. A Prix Opus Laureate, Beth has studied with a wide range of renowned industry leaders including Darcy James Argue, Christine Jensen and Jim McNeely. Written almost entirely prior to the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, McKenna’s new album, “Beyond Here,” was inspired by the impact we as humans have on the world around us. It mixes a wide range of influences: from Pat Metheny to Brad Mehldau, Snarky Puppy to Jacob Collier, and from Pink Floyd to the Brian Blade Fellowship.

Also this week, drummer and composer Johnathan Blake makes his Blue Note Records debut, “Homeward Bound,” with his quintet Pentad featuring saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins and vibraphonist Joel Ross;

 French-born vibraphonist Simon Moullier pays homage to the great composers and pillars of jazz on his sophomore album, “Countdown”;

    and pianist and film composer Todd Cochran offers up his first album since his two underground classics from the early Seventies as he folds his earlier explorations  into a fresh new musical creation on “Then and Again, Here & Now.”