Grammy-winning Brazilian singer/pianist Eliane Elias, a Concord artist, adds an extra layer of romance to her performance on Love Stories, her latest album, which features a full orchestra and all-English texts.

Pain might not be pretty, but honesty is riveting. Thirsty Ghost is an unabashed exploration of loss, heartache and, ultimately, healing. It represents a departure for vocalist Sara Gazarek, whose career began its ascent when she was a teenager singing with Wynton Marsalis at Avery Fisher Hall. It’s also the most exciting recording of her career.

In 2015, a few months after the U.S. lifted a decades-long embargo on travel to Cuba for U.S. citizens, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band made a pilgrimage to the Caribbean island from their home base in New Orleans. This trip, memorialized on film, became the lauded 2019 documentary A Tuba to Cuba (Blue Fox Entertainment). The film’s soundtrack, just released on Sub Pop Records under the same title, stands as an arresting musical narrative even without the colorful visual imagery from the film—the music tells its own story.

Los Angeles singer Gretje Angell’s debut …in any key (Grevlinto Records) comes as a surprise and a delight. A surprise because by her own admission she’s turned to jazz somewhat belatedly in her performing life and a delight because this debut is that good.

On the third night of her June run at Jazz Standard in New York City, singer Jazzmeia Horn leapt into her opener, the Betty Carter signature tune “Do Something,” with a fleet, peripatetic scat.  As she progressed further into the improvised number, the references zipped by without pause—Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints,” Ann Ronell’s “Willow Weep for Me.”

Jazz pianism today stands at an apex. There have been other moments in the music’s history when innovation rushed ahead of performers and listeners. But more than a century after jazz’s emergence, there are countless virtuosic pianists out there composing, recording and seeking a new vision for the genre.

(Elio Villafranca photo by Kasia Idzkowska)

Berlin-based singer-songwriter Céline Rudolph grew up immersed in multi-culturalism, surrounded by different languages, the grooves of several continents, and the tones of various instruments. “It’s a gift being raised with two languages because then your ear is very open to all different sounds,” Rudolph said in a recent trans-Atlantic phone call to discuss her latest release, Pearls, newly launched on her own label, Obsessions. “The ear is my tool—everything comes in through the ear.”

There’s a photo of Sam Rivers (1923-2011) at the White House, most likely from the so-called “White House Jazz Festival” on the South Lawn during Jimmy Carter’s administration. “That blue suit he had on? He made that,” recalled Monique Rivers Williams, daughter of the revered multi-instrumentalist. “He sewed all his own clothes...he wasn’t just a musician.”

At the end of 2017, Verve Records unveiled Ella at Zardi’s, a previously unreleased live recording of an Ella Fitzgerald club date from February 1956. Excitement ran high over the album, believed to be Fitzgerald’s first live record ever. Until now.

First and foremost, Michael Janisch is a bassist. He’s about to drop his third solo album. He’s worked as a side player for dozens of A-list jazz artists. And he’s toured relentlessly with multiple bands. So, yes, a bassist first.

The legacies of our classic jazz singers, once considered popular singers, have considerable reach. These early adopters of the American Songbook still define how these works are performed, even as modern jazz singers shape traditional vocal jazz to their own inspired ends. For this months’ vocal jazz issue, let’s take a look at how the influence of some beloved musical forebears as yet moves through singers today.

Guitarist Ron Jackson plays with the sterling technique and measured swing of a Tal Farlow or Bucky Pizzarelli, but it would be a mistake to think of him as a strict jazz traditionalist. His new album, Standards and Other Songs, his ninth as a leader for his own Roni Music label, contains plenty of unexpected twists and outré moments, despite the title’s anodyne first impression.

Free jazz percussionist Andrew Cyrille introduced tenor player Kidd Jordan from behind the kit at Roulette on June 11, the opening night of the 2019 Vision Festival in Brooklyn, NY. “We’re going to take you someplace else,” he said before jumping into a mesmeric repartee with the saxophonist and monster improviser.

The reason that world-renown clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera likes playing with Mark Walker is that the multiple Grammy-winning drummer “doesn’t play too loud.” D’Rivera says this with a laugh, but he’s more than serious about his appreciation of the rhythmic refinement that Walker has brought to their 30 years of collaboration. “Many musicians, especially drummers, lose their energy when you ask them to play soft,” he explained.  “Mark can play with the same energy without raising the volume. That’s really hard to find.”

June 1982 at The Hollywood Bowl. It was only the fourth year for the Playboy Jazz Festival at the celebrated amphitheater, and the lineup was spectacular: Freddie Hubbard, McCoy Tyner, Ron Carter, Tal Farlow, Dexter Gordon, Weather Report, The Manhattan Transfer, Grover Washington, Jr., Maynard Ferguson, Lionel Hampton, Dave Brubeck, Ornette Coleman, Willie Bobo, Woody Shaw, Milt Jackson, Sarah Vaughan. Front and center amidst this jazz royalty was vocalist Nancy Wilson, in a rare concert with trumpeter/ flugelhornist Art Farmer and saxophonist Benny Golson.  

Violence. Brutality. Segregation. Exploitation. These are the words that singer/composer Sara Serpa uses when she talks about the family legacy that she inherited—a legacy that her latest musical projects tackle head on. 

In 2016 Los Angeles-based vocalist Tierney Sutton and her eponymous band turned out a winning score for director Clint Eastwood’s film Scully. One of the tunes didn’t make the cut for the film but landed on the soundtrack; Sutton and co. reprise this uplifting song, “Arrow” on their latest release for BFM Jazz, Screenplay, a 15-song compilation culled from 80 years of Hollywood film-making.

On March 29, Blue Engine Records, the recording arm of Jazz at Lincoln Center, launched singer Betty Carter’s first posthumous album, The Music Never Stops (BE 0014; 1:16:05; HHHH). The album chronicles one of JALC’s early concerts—Carter in a whirlwind stage performance from 1992, on the same date as that of the release, backed alternately by a jazz orchestra, a string section, and three different piano trios. It’s Carter toward the end of her career, at her expressive and technical best.

Over the last decade, Tom Harrell has turned out about one HighNote album per year as a leader, trumpeter, and flugelhornist. A quintet of regular players usually serves as the core of these annual offerings, though not without deviations; sometimes he’ll double up his instruments, leave off a mainstay, like the piano, or add vocals or a guitar.

At times on Ancestral Recall (Ropeadope Records/Stretch Music), trumpeter Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah’s playing is so full of meaning that you can almost make out the intended words. He’ll repeat simple melodic phrases like a mantram over a rhythmic device culled from the African diaspora, then rise out of this polyrhythmic loam on a flying blast of sound. The view from above must be stunning.