Wednesday, April 8, 2015

News of Past Guests, April 2015 Edition

Don't let anybody tell you Sheila Jordan is yesterday's news.  Here's The New Yorker's preview of her weeklong run with the Steve Kuhn Trio at Birdland at the start of April, from "Goings On About Town":
An acolyte and friend of Charlie Parker, the singer Jordan absorbed bebop from the source, but she's also a committed modernist whose style has evolved with the ensuing decades. One of the key collaborators who assisted Jordan in her artistic growth is the equally inventive pianist Kuhn, who leads the trio supporting her at Birdland this week.
(Cameron Brown is the longtime bassist in that trio, by the way.)

A few years ago, Dave Douglas and Joe Lovano teamed up to start a band, "Sound Prints," devoted to music inspired by the legendary Wayne Shorter.  (The quintet also includes pianist Lawrence Fields, bassist Linda Oh, and drummer Joey Baron.) They've finally committed that project to wax--er, bits--in the form of an album for Blue Note recorded live at the Monterey Jazz Festival.  Here's a taste:



Hey--remember how, last time, we told you about Myra Melford's new band/project/album, Snowy Egret? On April 11th, she talked about it with Arun Rath on the weekend edition of All Things Considered:


And remember how we also gave you a preview of the Dafnis Prieto Sextet's new album? Now you can buy it--at Amazon, on iTunes, or at CDBaby.  And here's the video EPK, together with a studio performance of one of the album's strongest tracks, "Blah Blah":