Laurence Hobgood, Honor Thy Fathers It’s not that Laurence Hobgood was buried during his 18 years as Kurt Elling’s musical director. Indeed, he was one of the most admired supporting pianists in modern music. But last year—evidently with Elling’s encouragement—Hobgood parted ways with … [Read more...]

The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, All My Yesterdays (Resonance) This is an alert to an event—a recording documenting the birth of an ensemble that electrified listeners and set a new standard for big band jazz. Count Basie trumpeter Thad Jones and Stan Kenton drummer Mel Lewis first … [Read more...]

Peter Erskine, is Dr. Um (Fuzzy Music) Any marriage depends on how the partners blend. Drummer Peter Erskine helped Weather Report and Steps Ahead achieve two of the most successful of all efforts to fuse jazz with other elements. In Dr. Um (get it?), he does it again, with collaborators who … [Read more...]

Jaco Pastorius, Jaco: The Film (Iron Horse Entertainment) The documentary tells the story of the meteoric career and early burnout of the electric bassist who transformed the instrument. Video showing Pastorius (1951-1987) at work and at play alternates with appearances by musicians and others … [Read more...]

Susie Arioli, Spring (Spectra Musique) A longtime favorite in Canada, Susie Arioli’s fame could spread abroad on the strength of her singing in this collection. Indeed, strength is a fair description of her work, not in terms of force or volume but of lyric interpretation, phrasing and time … [Read more...]

Mette Henriette (ECM) The mystery, melancholy and minimalist magic of Mette Henriette Martedatter RølvÃ¥g’s music stems in part from her family origins in the Sámi, the indigenous people of northern Scandinavia. The young Norwegian tenor saxophonist and composer shares qualities of Nordic … [Read more...]

Halie Loren, Butterfly Blue (Justin Time) With a subdued manner and undercurrents of strong feeling, the Oregon singer ranges across a dozen songs of varying genres. Among them are standards by the Gershwins, Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, Charles Trenet and Harry Warren; a Horace Silver classic; and … [Read more...]

Brad Mehldau, 10 Years Solo Live (Nonesuch) Mehldau assembled this five-hour account of his solo piano mastery from tapes of concerts he played from 2004 to 2014. Applying the power of his technique and the nuances of his harmonic thinking, he explores his own compositions and music by a dizzying … [Read more...]

Josef Woodard, … [Read more...]

Terell Stafford, BrotherLee Love (Capri) From his emergence in the early 1990s, Terell Stafford’s conception has drawn on the modern jazz trumpet tradition at large. He has evidently not felt the need to pattern himself on individual predecessors. Accordingly, in this tribute Stafford does not … [Read more...]

Tom Harrell, First Impressions (High Note) The fascination of jazz musicians with French impressionist composers goes back at least as far as Bix Beiderbecke. Among his contemporary successors, Tom Harrell is Beiderbecke’s counterpart not only as a lyrical soloist but also as a musical thinker … [Read more...]

Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis: Live In Cuba (Blue Engine) The JALCO’s 2010 visit to Cuba coincided with the beginnings of warmer official relations between cold war enemies. Their two-CD set recorded at a Havana Theater includes a guest appearance by the prominent Cuban … [Read more...]

Karrin Allyson, Many A New Day (Motéma) Songs Richard Rodgers wrote with lyricist Lorenz Hart from 1925 to the early 1940s have been among the standards most often played and sung by jazz artists. His later collaborations with Oscar Hammerstein for their succession of hit Broadway musicals … [Read more...]

Patty Farmer, Playboy Swings: How Hugh Hefner and Playboy Changed the Face of Music (Beaufort Books) For sixty years, Hugh Hefner and his Playboy magazine have been easy targets for lampoon and parody. With their fixation on the care and feeding of the male libido, they have attracted plenty of … [Read more...]

Gabriel Alegría Afro-Peruvian Sextet 10 (Zoho) Trumpeter Alegría’s resourceful band of Peruvians and New Yorkers (Newyoruvians?) continue to meld Latin and North American traditions. Their stimulating fifth album alternates between the continents and blends musics, including an intriguing … [Read more...]

Erroll Garner, The Complete Concert By The Sea (Columbia) Garner’s heroic 1955 concert will be released this week in its entirety for the first time. Half of it appeared on an 11-track LP that was a landmark in the pianist’s history of joyful music making and sold more than half a million … [Read more...]

Fred Hersch, Solo (Palmetto) Hersch’s third Palmetto album since 2008 confirms that the pianist’s strength, subtlety and imagination are not only intact but have gained in acuity. There is nothing in this recital to indicate that seven years ago he faced a medical crisis that threatened his … [Read more...]

Logan Strosahl, Up Go We (Sunnyside) The unconventional structure of the title of Strosahl’s album smacks of post-Elizabethan England. Currents running through the music also evoke that time and place. The composer and saxophonist is a devotee of the orderly composer Henry Purcell (1659-1695) … [Read more...]

The Jaki Byard Project, Inch By Inch, Yard Byard (GM Recordings) An album in tribute to a prodigious pianist—without a pianist; it must have seemed a good idea when flutist Jamie Baum conceived it. And it was. Ms. Baum, drummer George Schuller and guitarist Jerome Harris studied with Byard … [Read more...]