Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify 
 The origin story of jazz has been debated and mythologized. The first jazz players interviewed often attributed their knowledge and sound to one man: Buddy Bolden. There have been many attempts in the past century to reenact concerts of Bolden’s heyday, yet most attempts to bring his sound to life have been doomed from a lack of available information regarding that specific period in music history. Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Derrick Shezbie has partnered with historian Charles Tolman in an effort to capture the spirit of Buddy Bolden with “The Ghost of Buddy Bolden.” The album is the culmination of heavy research and a reincarnation of the circumstances that Bolden would have created music in, and features an array of accomplished African American New Orleans musicians.

     Hailed by the Vancouver Sun as “one of Canada’s premier drummer-composer-bandleaders,” Toronto-based Ernesto Cervini has proven restlessly creative at the helm of the Ernesto Cervini Quartet, his innovative Turboprop sextet, his co-led trios MEM3, Myriad3 and Tunetown, and his Radiohead cover project Idiotech, among other efforts. With “Tetrahedron,” Cervini flips the script once again, undertaking his first project with an electric bassist (Rich Brown) and an electric guitar (the acclaimed Nir Felder). Together with them and the marvelous Cuban-born, Toronto-based alto saxophonist Luis Deniz, Cervini reveals still new facets to his musical imagination.

Also this week, another Canadian ensemble, the award-winning Emie R Roussel Trio, unveils its fifth album, “Rhythme de Passage”; 

 Denver jazz icon and saxophonist Keith Oxman collaborates with revered veteran Houston Person on “Two Cigarettes in the Dark”;

and Special EFX featuring Chieli Minucci are joined by “All Stars” including Eric Marienthal, Gerald Veasley, Regina Carter and Nelson Rangell on their latest release.

Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify 
     Marc Free of the celebrated Posi-Tone Records is proud to present “Solid Moments,” the latest in a series of projects he began a couple of years ago. The album features Idle Hands, a collaborative sextet of top-tier musicians who have done illustrious work as leaders or sidemen for the label. It includes guitarist Will Bernard, vibraphonist Behn Gillece, bassist Boris Kozlov, pianist Art Hirahara, saxophonist Sam Dillon and drummer Donald Edwards. The emphasis is on new original music by the band members. Free says the disc “speaks to this idea of a ‘repertory theater’ of artists that we work with, players who collaborate really well and understand what we’re trying to present to listeners.”

     Billy Strayhorn was one of the great composers of the 20^th century. He was an indispensable member of the Duke Ellington orchestra, collaborating with Ellington and contributing his own compositions and arrangements. Many of his pieces have become jazz standards. Pianist John DiMartino has uplifted the music of many major jazz artists during his 45-year career, including Ray Barretto, David ‘Fathead’ Newman, Pat Martino, Houston Person and Jon Hendricks, to name a few. “Passion Flower” is his latest accomplishment, a memorable tribute to Strayhorn with his all-star quintet featuring Eric Alexander.

Also this week, Roomful of Blues serves up some swinging jump blues on “In a Roomful of Blues,” the first new studio recording in nine years from this world-renowned, horn-drenched ‘little big band’;

trumpeter Win Pongsakorn puts together a varied selection of originals and fresh arrangements of well-known standards on his debut, “Yes, It Is!”;

     and saxophonist Ken Fowser unveils a new batch of original compositions for his quintet on “Morning Light.”