Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify      
It may be somewhat ironic, yet ultimately fitting, that the final recording by Larry Willis brought the veteran pianist and composer back to the place where he first began his impressive career as a recording artist, a career that spanned six decades. He first entered the hallowed halls of Rudy Van Gelder’s legendary Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey studios as a twenty-two year-old graduate of the Manhattan School of Music in January of 1965 to record with Jackie McLean for Blue Note Records. Willis’s expansive resume includes entries with the likes of Cannonball and Nat Adderly, Stan Getz, Carmen McRae, Woody Shaw, and many more. He appeared on hundreds of albums as a sideman and dozens more as a leader. His final CD, “I Fall in Love Too Easily,” features long-time friends Victor Lewis and Joe Ford and his relatively new colleague Jeremy Pelt.

     With a lyrical modern jazz sensibility, saxophonist and composer Tim Shaghoian’s debut album is a thoughtful exploration of hope and wonder. His compositions developed as gentle beacons guiding him toward a sense of clarity in understanding life events that have impacted him most. His nine original pieces, performed by his California-based quintet, dance with subtle shifts of emotion while song-like melodies are framed in unexpected rhythmic and harmonic structure.     

Also this week, trumpeter-composer-arranger Bill Warfield has one foot deeply embedded in funk and the other striding into the further reaches of jazz while leading his Hell’s Kitchen Funk Orchestra on “Smile”;

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 pianist Christian Sands reunites with bassist Yasushi Nakamura and saxophonist Marcus Strickland, and is joined by trumpeter Sean Jones, trombonist Steve Davis, guitarist Marven Sewell and drummer Clarence Penn for his third full-length recording, “Be Water”;

and “The Way I Feel” is the latest from Chicago saxophonist  Bernard Scavella.

    Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify 
Guitarist John Scofield celebrates the music of his friend and mentor Steve Swallow on “Swallow Tales,” made in an afternoon in New York City last year “old school,” as Scofield says, acknowledging that more than forty years of preparation led up to it. John was a 20-years-old student at Berklee when he first met played with bassist Steve Swallow, and they have continued ever since, in many different contexts. The rapport between the two is evident in every moment. Behind the drum kit, Bill Stewart is alert to all the implications of the interaction.

     Though based in multiple musical realms, pianist Alain Mallet’s ambitious Mutt Slang projects coalesce into a world that exudes ‘exotic’ yet ultimately feels familiar. Sharing the musical landscape with young musicians from Palestine, Brazil, Italy, Israel, Japan, Bulgaria, Panama, Ireland, Puerto Rico and the U.S., the complexity of their backgrounds—musically, ethnically, and otherwise–permeates the session for the newest edition, “A Wake of Sorrows Engulfed in Rage,” suffusing Mallet’s compositions with an undeniable energy and life.

Also this week, “Anemone” features New York-based tenor saxophonist Vito Dieterle performing swinging and soulful jazz in an updated version of the classic tenor-organ-guitar-drums quartet;

pianist-vocalist Dena DeRose and her trio mates Martin Wind and Matt Wilson are joined by special guests Houston Person on saxophone, trumpeter Jeremy Pelt and singer Sheila Jordan on Dena’s eleventh album as a leader, “Ode to the Road”;  

         
     and the 3D Jazz Trio, featuring Diva Jazz Orchestra members Sherrie Maricle on drums, Amy Shook on bass and Jackie Warren on piano, unveil “I Love to See You Smile.”