Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
A native of G
eneseo, Illinois, Jim Buennig is a saxophonist now based in Iowa City. He received a Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz Studies from Western Illinois University and is currently completing a Master of Arts degree in Jazz Studies at the University of Iowa, where he serves as a Teaching Assistant in the program. Buennig is also the director of the Bix Beiderbecke Youth Jazz Band, an auditioned group of middle and high school students from the Davenport area. He and his groups perform extensively throughout the Midwest and have been invited to perform at the Iowa City Jazz Festival and the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival. Jim’s quintet on his debut disc as a leader, “It’s Like This,” features other familiar names from the Eastern Iowa jazz scene, including bassist Blake Shaw and guitarist Dan Padley, on a program of the reedman’s originals.
While drummer Gerry Gibbs has tackled myriad projects in the past, from 2006’s Thrasher Big Band project to 2010’s Electric Thrasher Orchestra playing the music of Miles Davis to the 2013 Grammy-nominated Thrasher Dream Trio with Ron Carter and Kenny Barron, his new 2-disc set, his 11th as a bandleader, “Weather or Not,” is his most audacious and fully-realized project to date. The first disc is a Weather Report tribute, with Gibbs reimagining that band’s material from the point of view of an acoustic piano-led trio. The featured instrument is played by luminous new talent Alex Collins, with the brilliant Austrian-born Hans Glawischnig on bass. Disc two features Gibbs cranking up the creative juices on a set of originals, traversing everything from flamenco to pulse-quickening funk, calypso, gospel, Latin jazz, R&B and plenty of all-out swing.
Also this week, the eighth CD in the “Live at the Deer Head Inn” series is from singer/songwriter and pianist Bob Dorough and his trio recorded on his 92nd birthday in December of 2015.
Saxophonist Greg Abate, who has worked tirelessly across five decades to keep the flame of classic jazz lit, is joined by pianist Tim Ray and his trio on a bebop “Road to Forever”.
Trumpeter Jeremy
Pelt, who has worked with such legendary jazz veterans as Johnny Griffin, Cedar Walton, Wayne Shorter and James Moody, taps into a generous and encouraging vibe with his four handpicked musical compatriots on “Make Noise!”
In many ways, Charles Mingus and Gerry Mulligan couldn’t have been more different. One was notoriously fiery and confrontational; the other understated, the epitome of cool. But one thing the two jazz icons did share—beyond their influential shaping of the music’s low end—was their singularity of vision, a wholly unique perspective that in different ways redirected the trajectory of jazz through their own individual conceptions—with complete disregard for the naysayers. With that in mind, both Mulligan and Mingus would no doubt approve of the reimagining that Mark Masters has made of their compositions on “Blue Skylight.” The eleven pieces are vivid acts of recomposition, each vividly rendered and finely tailored to fit the gifted and distinctive players of the Mark Masters Ensemble.
Mandolinist and singer Chris Thiele and pianist Brad Mehldau first performed together in 2011 as part of Mehldau’s residency at London’s Wigmore Hall. The Guardian said of the performance, “Mehldau struck up his signature rocking chord vamp over which lightly struck motifs swell to sensuous extended melodies. Thile kept cajoling him with percussive snaps, flying runs, and chords strummed fast enough to sound as seamless as a purring string section, inducing Mehldau…to bat back the playful provocation with stinging rejoinders.” Longtime admirers of each other’s work, the pair first toured as a duo in 2013. At the end of 2015, they played a two-night stand at New York’s Bowery Ballroom before going into to the studio to record “Chris Thiele & Brad Mehldau,” a new CD featuring a mix of covers and original songs.
