Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
 The new album, “Mike Drop,” demonstrates the mastery of two jazz veterans—iconic jazz drumming legend Mike Clark and renowned saxophonist Michael Zilber. Between Clark’s straight-ahead post-bop drumming and Zilber’s raw and refined sax mastery, the clarity and brilliance of this release is the rewarding product of a ten year-long friendship between the artists and an inspiring week of performances in the Bay Area. The disc, recorded in Oakland in 2018, features a blend of the tunes drawn from the group’s successful series of gigs in the region that year.

     When Grammy-winning multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter Leo Sidran wrote the song “Trying Times” in early 2020, he had no idea just how prescient it would turn out to be. When Covid came, he settled into domestic life, and set about writing a collection of songs that offered an intimate look at family life during the pandemic year. The resulting disc, “The Art of Conversation,” is his seventh solo album, and rests on a foundation of Sidran’s one-man-band production style of playing drums, bass, guitar, keyboards, vibes and singing. The record, however, also counts on over 60 collaborators from around the world.

Also this week, the Tom Kubis Big Band has baseball on its mind with “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”;

Chicago guitarist Kyle Asche and his organ trio return for their highly anticipated third CD, “Five Down Blues”;

     and pianist Art Hirahara turns his musical aspirations toward an “Open Sky” for his sixth release, featuring bassist Boris Kozlov and drummer Rudy Royston.