New Music Monday for January 18, 2021
At only 30-years-old, pianist
Emmet Cohen the winner of the American Pianists Association’s 2019 Cole Porter Fellowship has made a name for himself performing and recording with jazz masters Jimmy Cobb, Ron Carter, Benny Golson, Tootie Heath and George Coleman, among others. On his new album, “Future Stride,” Cohen revisits jazz’s earliest forms through a progressive lens. The disc features bassist Russell Hall, drummer Kyle Poole, trumpeter Marquis Hill and saxophonist Melissa Aldana.
Cory Weeds delivers a blistering set of Italian-themed tunes backed up by one of the pre-eminent organ bands in jazz today on “O Sole Mio!” The results speak for themselves: swinging bop lines, crackling rhythm section accompaniment and interaction, and an ensemble sound that underscores the values of swing and groove. A carefully selected set of compositions celebrates, through reinvention and interpretation,
Guitarist
Phil Ravita have recorded a set of original and fresh new jazz, high-quality material that can be adopted by today’s jazz artists. They gathered a particularly strong quintet and the results are the nine new originals that comprise Jagged Spaces. With tenor and soprano-saxophonist Benny Russell, pianist Greg Small, and drummer Nuc Vega all adding their musical personalities to the quintet, the Grasso-Ravita Jazz Ensemble on Jagged Spaces performs four songs by Grasso, two apiece by Ravita and Russell, and one from Small.
The set begins with Grasso’s “Jagged Spaces,” which has a singable melody along with fluent and unpredictable soprano, guitar, piano and drums solos. It serves as a fine introduction to the group. The relaxed jazz waltz “Her Life Incomplete,” “Songhai” (highlighted by Benny Russell’s tenor solo which is both soulful and explorative), and the minor-toned straight ahead blues “Blue Sunshine” (which has a particularly speedy bass s