Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
Doug MacDonald and Harvey Newmark, two greatly in-demand players from Southern California, have worked together many times through the years, often in MacDonald’s groups which range from trios to his 13-piece ensemble the Jazz Coalition. Philly-native MacDonald has worked over the years with Trummy Young, Joe Williams, Carl Fontana and Jack Montrose, among others, while Newmark has collaborated with the likes of Bill Holman, Rosemary Clooney, Buddy Rich and Ray Charles. The pair perform a set of swinging jazz duets on “Toluca Lake Jazz.” Interpreting seven standards and six MacDonald originals, the duo creates an exquisite set of light-toned but hard-swinging music.
Vocalist Roseanna Vitro—performer, recording artist, educator and journalist—reissues “Listen Here,” the 1982 debut album that launched her career. Featuring veteran pianist Kenny Barron, the project ushered into the spotlight a formidable new artist with chops and sensitivity in equal measure. Though this a first recording, Vitro shows herself a mature jazz singer. Esteemed jazz journalist Neil Tesser notes, “Roseanna can sing rings around half the vocalists you can name. Her warm, confident clarity of tone is immediately noticeable, but most startling is her boldness of phrasing.”
Also this week, “The Long Game” is the eleventh album from celebrated vocalist and songwriter Jacqui Naylor;
bassist Lee Smith, who is bassist Christian McBride’s father, gathers up an all-star band including Terell Stafford, Tim Warfield, Joe Magnarelli and Byron Landham among others for “Faith in the New Day”;
and saxophonist Adrian Cunningham presents the newest release from his band Professor Cunningham and his Old School, “The Lockdown Blues.”