The Listening Guide
🎶 The listening guide: five albums, released during the past twelve months, chosen around a weekly theme 🎶
This week, we have five fantastic albums from artists based in the United States. Los Angeles-based pianist and composer Jamael Dean unites his love of jazz, hip-hop, and Yoruba traditions on his debut album for Stones Throw Records, Primordial Waters. The LP features two sets of ten tracks: the first explorative jazz compositions, and the second hip-hop tunes constructed around samples from the first ten recordings. Award-winning vocalist, bassist, and “songwright” Esperanza Spalding composed the music of SONGWRIGHTS APOTHECARY LAB in three locations: Wasco County, OR, Portland, OR, and Manhattan, NY. A range of emotions and lyrical themes feed through the highly collaborative record, and are documented in great depth on the terrific website for the project. Vocalist Dara Tucker has arranged ‘classic singer-songwriter and soul compositions of the protest era’ for her project Dreams of Waking: Music For a Better World, intending to give a voice to ‘the cry for social justice and change that has swept across the United States in the new decade.’ The songs include classics by Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway, but also a powerful original entitled Do We Sleep? which, in Tucker’s words, “refers to the hope that our society will develop an awareness of the inequities that still exist.” On I Too Sing America: A Black Man’s Diary, keys player Luke Carlos O’Reilly aims to ‘convey the pain, the hurt and heartache that one goes through as a black man or woman living in America today.’ Celebrated composer, saxophonist, flautist, and NEA Jazz Masters Fellowships recipient Henry Threadgill completes our list with Poof, a quintet recording made late in 2019 at Manhattan’s Samurai Hotel. You can support Esperanza and Dara’s albums via the smart links on our site (leading to various streaming platforms and webshops) and you can find Jamael, Luke, and Henry’s albums on Bandcamp!
Jamael Dean – Primordial Waters
Esperanza Spalding – Songwrights Apothecary Lab
Dara Tucker – Dreams of Waking: Music For a Better World
Luke Carlos O'Reilly – I Too Sing America: A Black Man's Diary
Album of the Week
Our NQ Jazz album of the week comes from MC4, an experimental jazz group led by guitarist Matt Clark and featuring Charlotte Keeffe on trumpet, Ozzy Moysey on double bass, and James Edmunds on drums. The album documents the strange and uncertain feeling of coming out of lockdown, exploring urban and unconventional spaces with recordings made in various locations that capture ambient sounds as well as the group’s performances. You can investigate the album on Bandcamp!
Classic Album
Our NQ Jazz classic album this week is legendary pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams’ Zoning. Originally released in 1974 on her own label and later reissued by Smithsonian Folkways, it features the pianist and jazz luminary working with a small ensemble on a number of gorgeous piano-led pieces, imbued with soul and demonstrating her compositional ear and brilliant dexterity as a player.