Mary Foster Conklin: These Precious Days (Mock Turtle Music) is the latest album by the New York-based jazz vocalist and radio host, featuring mostly women writers in a mix of lesser-known jazz and pop tunes.
Conklin brings to life seldom heard or forgotten songs with meaningful lyrics in an album that features musicians such as John Di Martino, Sara Caswell, Ed Howard, Vince Cherico, Guilherme Montiero and Samuel Torres. The album includes “Summertime” by Leonard Cohen and Sharon Robinson, “Some Cats Know” by Leiber and Stoller, “Come in From the Rain” by Melissa Manchester and Carole Bayer Sager, “Just for Now,” by Dory Previn and André Previn and “A Little White Ship” another by Leiber/Stoller, among others. “September Song” by Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson is also included, in memory of her father who died in 2018.
Gunhild Carling: Good Evening Cats! displays Carling’s multilingual abilities, featuring original songs and classic favorites in English, French and German.
Guest artists include Grammy-nominated Billy Stritch, her daughter Idun Carling, Daniel Glass, Steve Doyle, Jason Bellenkes and niece Nanna Carling. Recorded in New York City, the album opens with the title track “Good Evening Cats” then moves into “My Lovin’ Heart Can’t Forget.” Carling showcases her German in “Mack the Knife” and her French in “La Vie En Rose.” “Att Angöra En Brygga” features her daughter Idun Carling. Carling is known for her energetic performances in which she sings and swings playing one of 11 instruments (trumpet, trombone, harmonica, oboe, harp, flute, recorder or jazz bagpipe and piano, among others) or juggling and tap dancing.
Bob Levy: Ballads is a collection of Levy’s favorite ballads from some of his previous albums, plus several brand new tunes including “With
You,” co-written with Alex Rybeck, recorded by Nita Whitaker, and “Is This Still Love,” an original Levy composition recorded by Nicolas King with Doug Hammer on piano and cellist Peter Sachon. Eighteen tracks total express the many sides of love including, as per the album’s cover, “Love, Joy, Heartbreak, Goodbye.”
s such as Charlie Parker, Horace Silver, Michel Legrand and other jazz luminaries. His arrangements are simpler and a bit more open than on his previous recordings, giving more space for spontaneity. Goletz wound up using the first take of more than half the numbers. Special guests on the album include Don Braden,soprano sax and LAJUAN Carter, vocals. Also featured are Henry Heinitsh, guitar; Jim Ridl, piano; Brian Glassman, basses; Steve Johns, drums; Joe Mowatt, percussion; Robin Zeh and Paul Woodiel, violins; Michael Roth, and David Gold, violas and Sarah Hewitt-Roth, cello.
May Han Oh and drummer Allison Miller. Lawry’s intent was to function like a horn player, providing the whole landscape without the benefit of chords. The Frank Loesser composition “Travelling Light” opens the album, which also includes standards such as “Taking a Chance on Love”, weaving in some Coltrane-esque harmony, Cole Porter’s “You’re The Top,” “‘Deed I Do” and “Takes Two to Tango,” a duet with Oh. Other tunes include “317 East 32nd Street,” a Lennie Tristano tune that Lawry explores wordlessly before Frank Loesser’s “My Time of Day” and “I’ve Never Been in Love Before” bring the record to a close.
r voice and guitar, which balances originals and standards, both familiar and unexpected. Conceived as a reflective yet hopeful exploration of universal themes such as love, loss, hope, and possibility, the two musicians selected a mixture of their favorite songs by other composers and some of Hatfield’s originals, which take inspiration from a wide variety of sources. These include the title song, “Lonely Nocturne” from Hatfield’s 2013 homage For Langston, a jazz song cycle in which he set poems by Langston Hughes, and “Juniper Street,” which like many Hatfield compositions, began life as an instrumental in 1998, and others. Treasures from the Great American Songbook and beyond include, among others, “Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home” with music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by Johnny Mercer,” “You Can Never Hold Back Spring,” written by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan and Tommy Wolf and Fran Landesman’s “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most.”
m comes from “No Plan,” a relatively obscure David Bowie tune; Marinaro especially relates to the lyric, “All the things that are my life/My moods, my beliefs, my desires, Me alone/Nothing to regret/This is no place, but here I am/This is not quite yet.” Helping Marinaro bring Not Quite Yet to life are three longtime members of his band, guitarist Mike Allemana, pianist Tom Vaitas and bassist John Tate, with the addition of drummer George Fludas. Tracks include tunes such as Mel Tormé standard “Born to be Blue,” Antonio Carlos Jobim’s bossa-nova gem “Someone to Light Up My Life,” “Make Me Rainbows,” from the 1967 Dick Van Dyke film Fitzwilly, composed by John Williams with lyrics by Alan and the late Marilyn Bergman and more.
ist Frank Marino (her producer), drummer Chris Brown, guitarist Pat Bergeson, and Joel Frahm on tenor and soprano saxxophones. Guests include vibraphonist Chuck Redd, trombonist Wycliffe Gordon, and organist Brad Cole. The album includes 12 standards of both well-known songs and superior obscurities. Marino is inventive on such numbers as “I Hear Music,” Artie Shaw’s “Moonray,” Ella Fitzgerald’s “You Showed Me The Way,” “It Could Happen To You,” Benny Carter’s “When Lights Are Low” and “The Late, Late Show.” A special highlight is a rare revival of the Anita O’Day hit “Let Me Off Uptown,” as well as the Billie Holiday-associated “Detour Ahead.”
Hell’s Kitchen Funk Orchestra. Time Capsule presents 12 tracks, representing an album that’s essentially autobiographical, beginning with an arrangement of Billy Taylor’s “I Wish I Knew.” Warfield pays tribute to Chick Corea’s Return To Forever on his second track, “Light as a Feather,” and an homage to his early childhood with “Alfie.” Also reflecting major moments in Warfield’s life are The Temptations through his orchestration on the lyrically-amended “Just My Imagination.” A whimsical “Finale/Let It Go” from Frozen is also included, along with many more tunes. Warfield has dedicated this album to the memory of his brother, John who very recently passed.
