New Releases Spotlight: Week of June 6, 2016

This week in the Music Lounge, our music director Paul Abella reviews three new releases, including one from a fantastic local big band!

Hey everybody!  Let’s take a look at three fantastic new releases that have started getting spun on WDCB in the last couple of weeks…

First off let’s start with Chicago’s very own New Standard Jazz Orchestra, who just put out an extraordinary album called Waltz for Nothing.  The lineup here is a who’s who of jazz superstars around Chicago, and the disc sounds exactly like the all-star effort that it is.  Featuring Mark Colby, Marquis Hill, Tom Garling and a host of others, it’s a knock-out of an album.  I’m partial to the beautiful version of Billy Strayhorn’s "Star Crossed Lovers," but really, this entire disc is muscular modern big band music.  Count me as a fan.

Pianist Cyrus Chestnut’s latest is Natural Essence, and it finds him smack dab in the middle of an excellent trio featuring Buster Williams on the bass and Lenny White on the drums.  Cyrus is inventive throughout, turning Joe Henderson’s "Mamacita" into a funky, Horace Silver-esque jam, and "It Could Happen to You" into a beautiful up-tempo vehicle for these three to jam on.  If mellow is more your speed, there’s also a long and gorgeous version of "My Romance" too.
 

And last, but certainly not least, trumpeter Etienne Charles has just released a new disc called the San Jose Suite.  Joined by a great band that includes the phenomenal bassist Ben Williams, this is, to my ears, Charles’s best work to date.  Fusing Jazz and Caribbean sounds, this disc features the “Latin tinge” that Jelly Roll Morton spoke about so long ago, especially on standout tracks like "Boruca" and "Cahuita."  The more straight ahead sounds make an appearance as well on one of my favorite tunes on San Jose Suite, "Gold Rush 2.0."

Next week, I’ll review new music from Brad Mehldau, Kenny Garrett and One For All, here in the WDCB Music Lounge.   ‘Til then… keep your ears open!