Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
For the past 17 years, the Grammy Award-winning Spanish Harlem Orchestra has earned their reputation as today’s premiere salsa ensemble. Considered “the leading light of the salsa reconstruction movement” by Newsday, they have performed on the world’s top stages and at nearly every major jazz festival, including those in Newport, Montreal and Monterey. “The Latin Jazz Project” is a natural progression for the SHO as their artistic director, Oscar Hernandez, is considered one of the most important Latin jazz pianists of his generation. Hernandez has melded his Latin jazz expertise with Spanish Harlem Orchestra’s signature salsa dura sound to produce the ensemble’s first all-Latin jazz recording.

     “Data Lords” is a new double-album by Grammy Award-winning composer and bandleader Maria Schneider. Inspired by conflicting relationships between the digital and natural worlds, the recording features Schneider’s acclaimed orchestra of 18 world-class musicians. “As big data companies clamor for our attention, I know that I’m not alone in struggling to find space—to keep connected with my inner world, the natural world, and just the simpler things in life,” says Schneider. “Just as I feel myself ping ponging between a digital world and the real world, the same dichotomy is showing up I my music…it felt natural to make a two-album release reflecting these two polar extremes.”

               
Also this week, Mark Egan and Danny Gottlieb, long time band mates and highly acclaimed rhythm section, draw from their 49 years of playing experience with Pat Metheny, Gil Evans, Pat Martino, Larry Coryell and many other luminaries and explore their highly creative interplay and improvisational stylings on “Electric Blue”;

Nigerian-born bassist, composer and arranger Michael Olatuja enlisted the talents of Dianne Reeves, Regina Carter, Joe Lovano, Lionel Louke and others to realize his vision of what he calls Cinematic Afrobeat on his second release, “Lagos Pepper Soup”;

       and Randy Brecker and Eric Marienthal team up for a new project, “Double Dealin’,” featuring John Patitucci and Dave Weckl.

     Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
While a few organists have recorded with a big band (including Jimmy Smith with Oliver Nelson), Radam Schwartz remembers the Richard ‘Groove’ Holmes collaboration with the Gerald Wilson Orchestra on his new CD, “Message from Groove and GW.” Born and raised in New York City, Radam has worked with the likes of Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis, Russell Malone, David ‘Fathead’ Newman and Cecil Brooks III, appearing on over 40 recordings as a sideman, as well as nine discs of his own. Joined by the Abel Mireles Jazz Exchange Orchestra, Radam has become the first organist to play all the bass lines through an entire big band album. In addition, he contributed three originals and five of the ten arrangements to the new project.

     “Harlem Stories: The Music of Thelonious Monk” is the latest from saxophonist Teodross Avery. His ninth release as a leader is less a tribute to Monk than a deep study of the music. “I wanted to make sure that we brought the feeling and the spirit of Harlem into the music,” Avery explains. “Harlem has always been the center of Black American urban culture since the 1920s and I just wanted to capture that feeling in the music.” He does that with two separate bands on the disc, including pianists Anthony Wonsey and D.D. Jackson and drummers Willie Jones III and Marvin ‘Bugalu’ Smith. Corcoran Holt is bassist for both bands.

Also this week, the South Florida Jazz Orchestra celebrates its 15^th anniversary with “Cheap Thrills: the Music of Rick Margitza,” featuring the compositions, arrangements and the playing of the saxophonist;

New York trombonist Matt Haviland features an all-star lineup on “Something to Say,” including saxophonist Vincent Herring, pianist David Kikoski, bassist Ugonna Okegwa, and drummer Johnathan Blake;

      and guitarist Will Bernard offers up his ninth release as a leader, “Freelance Subversives.”