The Listening Guide
🎶 The listening guide: five albums, released during the past twelve months, chosen around a weekly theme 🎶
This week, we celebrate jazz suites: sweeping, conceptual works — spread across a number of tracks and movements — that take inspiration from a broad range of subjects. From jazz festival commissions inspired by landscapes and locations, to works which accompany dance and reflect upon key moments in the history of civil rights, there’s a rich vein of jazz suites waiting to be tapped.
Christopher Parker & Kelley Hurt – No Tears Suite
Charles McPherson – Jazz Dance Suites
Asher Gamedze – Dialectic Soul
The Modern Operative (Kelly Ottaway) – Clarence Jazz Suite
Vagelis Stefanopoulos Ensemble – Idyllwild Suite
Album of the Week
Our NQ Jazz Album of the Week is the fifth LP from saxophonist and composer Ben Wendel, who choses to reflect upon the increasing complexity and social imbalance within our society through this eight-track release. In addition to himself on saxophone, bassoon, and EFX — the album features pianist and keys players Shai Maestro and Gerald Clayton, vocalist Michael Mayo, double bassist Joe Sanders, and drummer Nate Wood. Check it out on Bandcamp!
Classic Album
Recorded fifty years ago today (with the exception of its fifth track, recorded in performance at The Village Gate in July, 1970), Journey in Satchidananda is the outstanding fourth album from the late multi-instrumentalist and composer, Alice Coltrane. Incorporating a wide range of musical styles, and featuring contributions from Pharoah Sanders, Cecil McBee, Rashied Ali, Tulsi, and Majid Shabazz — it’s an album to lift the spirit and inspire the mind.