Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.

For the better part of a decade, acclaimed trombonist, producer and composer Delfeayo Marsalis has spent most Wednesday nights at the helm of his dynamic Uptown Jazz Orchestra’s residency at Snug Harbor in New Orleans. With “Jazz Party,” Marsalis’ seventh studio album as a leader, he delivers an original compositions-heavy set of music that showcases the same exuberant energy of those shows, complete with modernized twists on New Orleans songbook gems, and swinging, groove-infused homages to the contributions of modern jazz masters. “Jazz, the indigenous American music, is a music of celebration and optimism,” he explains. “The Uptown Jazz Orchestra is such a fun band that I wanted to capture its uniqueness…really capture the joy that is a central trademark of the band.”

After a long and storied career, saxophonist Brian Scanlon is releasing his debut CD, “Brain Scan.” Scanlon is a first-call studio musician who has worked on dozens of movies and television shows over the past 32 years. He’s also busy working as a sideman on recording projects for some of the top names in jazz. But he is perhaps best known for his work with Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band, for which he holds the first tenor sax chair. Scanlon’s writing is stylistically diverse but he’s particularly drawn to Latin and funk grooves.

Also this week, Bay Area trumpeter Erik Jekabson, who has played with the likes of Galactic, John Mayer and Kamasi Washington, unveils his third album with his sextet, “One Note at a Time”;

renowned Russian pianist and composer Yelena Eckemoff focuses her music on “Nocturnal Animals” on her new disc, recorded in Norway;

and Omaha-based guitarist Aaron Stroessner digs into his love of jazz with his debut, “Haymarket Station.”

    Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
 A staple of New York City’s jazz and Afro-Cuban scenes over the last five decades, acclaimed flutist Andrea Brachfeld celebrates the sounds of Brazil with a spirited tribute to Antonio Carlos Jobim, “Brazilian Whispers.” Along with arrangements of Jobim classics, Brachfeld offers a look into her writing partnership with pianist and frequent collaborator Bill O’Connell through some of their Brazil-inspired compositions. With bandmates O’Connell, guitarist Ronnie Ben-Hur, bassists Harvie S and Lincoln Goines, and drummer/percussionists Jason Tiemann, T. Portinho, and Chembo Corniel, Andrea creates an inspired, deeply grooving collection of Brazilian gems.

     Over a twenty-eight-year span, the high energy Canadian band Shuffle Demons have released eight CDs, two hit videos, won several music awards, done numerous TV and radio appearances and toured nationally and internationally. They broke onto the Canadian music scene in 1984 with an electrifying musical fusion that drew in equal measure from Sun Ra, Charles Mingus, Run DMC and the Beastie Boys. A hit at festivals all over the world, the Shuffle Demons are a crowd pleasing, full on musical group that backs up wild stage antics and eye-catching costumes with phenomenal playing by some of Canada’s most talented musicians. We’ll introduce their fun new album, “Crazy Time.”

London-based Wild Card features a blend of hard-bop, Afro/Samba and funk grooves on “Beast from the East”;

Also this week, pianist Bill Cunliffe is joined by a Hawaii-based rhythm section for “Sunrise Over Molokai”;

   and Kurt Elling is joined by Australian trumpeter James Morrison “Live in New York” at Birdland.