Famed jazz percussionist and double-Grammy nominee Sammy Figueroa and Brazilian singer/songwriter Glaucia Nasser got together in Sao Paolo and created an album that presents a perfect balance of great musicianship and soaring vocals. Featuring guitarist Chico Pinheiro, pianist/composer Bianca Gismonti and pandeiro virtuoso Bernardo Aquilar this album is full of surprises. Sammy's percussion flows beneath the songs, with bursts of Uruguayan candombe, Cuban bata, Puerto Rican bomba and of course carnival samba, while Glaucia's pure sound is aspirational and heartfelt, transcending language.
Tenor saxophonist J.D. Allen was born in Detroit, MI, on December 11, 1972. He is a member of the third wave of Young Lion mainstream jazz players. As a young man, he was influenced by the great musicians who stayed in Detroit, but upon his arrival in New York City his real apprenticeship began, as he worked with such notables as George Cables, Betty Carter, Ron Carter, Jack DeJohnette, Frank Foster's Loud Minority big band, Butch Morris, David Murray, and Wallace Roney.
Alto saxophonist Jim Snidero brings the sum total of his experiences to the fore on Main Street, including those as a leader as well as a sideman with Frank Wess, the Mingus Big Band, Jack McDuff, and Toshiko Akiyoshi. Here he draws upon a quarter-century of touring experiences for a trip through some of the American experience via a cycle of new compositions and two covers. With bassist Linda Oh, drummer Rudy Royston and Cuban pianist Fabian Almazan, Main Street offers fresh original material, imaginative arrangements, inspired soloing, and cohesive yet spontaneous group interaction.
When you visit a franchise restaurant, you always know what will be on the menu and what it will taste like. When you listen to a Bill O'Connell recording you may not know what is on the menu, but you're guaranteed it'll be a gourmet delight. As in O'Connell's previous recording the gifted veterans and leaders in their own right, Conrad Herwig on trombone and saxophonist Steve Slagle add their prowess to the mix. O’Connell gives his arranging chops a workout with interesting takes on Willow Weep for Me and John Lennon's “Imagine” and penned some new tunes specifically for this recording.
Jim Snidero is known to spin out wonderfully clean, inventive lines. His transparent sound and rapid execution evoke the early Art Pepper, as well as one of Snidero's own teachers Phil Woods. He never resorts to aimless scribbling, even at the quickest tempos, while his ballad interpretations are filled with exquisitely oblique lines. This, the saxophonist's second release for Savant, presents a unique ensemble, with no keyboard of any kind, the rhythm section of Paul Gill, bass and Billy Drummond, drums propel the proceedings forward while fret-master Paul Bollenback lays down the changes.
Joe Chambers is one of the drummers from the fifties and sixties who, along with Max Roach and Art Blakey has influenced an entire generation of drummers. With an ensemble that includes stalwarts Eric Alexander on tenor saxophone, Xavier Davis on piano and others, Chambers here breathes fresh life into a number of well-known jazz classics. While the overall approach is mainstream, the sound is unequivocally contemporary. It remains reverential to tradition yet with a clear regard for jazz as a living, breathing entity.
Peter Hand has been a prolific and active presence on the New York Jazz scene for many years and has worked with and/or written music for Carmen Lundy, the George Coleman Octet and the Lee Konitz Nonet. On his debut release for Savant Records, the Peter Hand Big Band featuring tenor sax giant Houston Person pays tribute to the music of Harold Arlen and features a lineup of stellar musicians including Don Braden, Ralph Lalama, Cecil Bridgewater, Valery Ponomarev, Jim Rotondi, Richard Wyands and Harvie S, putting a fresh and swinging spin on some of the most memorable songs in the Harold Arlen Songbook. Album includes such Arlen classics as "Come Rain or Come Shine", "The Man That Got Away", "Let's Fall in Love", "Stormy Weather" and more.
Giacomo Gates is an extraordinary vocal stylist. He's often credited as a contemporary Eddie Jefferson, but remains a true innovator, not an imitator. For his Savant debut, Gates has chosen a stimulating selection of songs by the influential and controversial Gil Scott-Heron. Scott-Heron made music that reflected the turbulence and increasing pessimism of the early 70s. This material is tailor-made for Gates, who without question is the best-suited performer to deliver the satirical and insightful lyrics of a true American original, Gil Scott-Heron.
The music perpetrated by Jack Walrath & The Masters of Suspense is not easy to describe (with his usual left-of-center humor, Jack would whole-heartedly approve of the verb "perpetrated"). One could say that it is a mix of such disparate elements as classical, jazz, funk, neo-post-bop, world beat, heavy metal & more. The simple fact is that Jack & the Masters' music is one of those all too rare art forms that is substantially more than the sum of it's parts. Modern? To be sure. You won't be hearing any of these tracks on a "Jazz For A Sunny Afternoon" compilation. But all of Jack's music stimulates thought and, most importantly, communicates.
When you think of hard-driving swing, daring expression, sophistication and elegance in artistry, formidable technique and a thunderous sound, there are only a very small handful of contemporary pianists you think of and two of them are on this recording! Eric Reed and Cyrus Chestnut have played with a virtual Who's Who of jazz including Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard and others. Captured live in the rarely-encountered two-piano format, they offer enough jazz adorned with uninhibited improvisations, flashes of pop & bop, whimsy and wit to please the most discriminating of jazz aficionados.
