Greetings! Every Friday I’ll be bringing you some highlights of new music we are featuring here on Jazz88. This is all connected to This Just In, our weekly show that celebrates new jazz releases. You can catch This Just In, hosted by moi, on Fridays at Noon on 88.5 or catch it on your own schedule from our show page.
I’d also like to mention that we are currently in our Spring Drive. We believe in spreading the news about great new releases and we know you do too. Please take the time to support this mission with a donation to Jazz88.
If you have input about the music we’re playing, or ideas about what else we should be playing, let me know please! I can be reached at sean@jazz88.fm.
HeyArlo – “Chanting and Gossip” a new single from the band Listen Here
I expect new projects to often sound overly ambitious at their first couple stabs at studio recording. There’s a desire to impress each other, a desire to make it count cause who knows how long the project will last. I hear the opposite in HeyArlo. With two songs released the band sounds comfortable creating and solving small problems for themselves. They lay out a groove, find the borders of it and offer up a story within the groove. The effect of HeyArlo is measured, gorgeous and memorable. Drop an extra star on Evan Slack for his softly auto-wah pyrotechnic solo that still stays true to the overall texture of the groove. Now let’s get a full length out before I turn 50 please.
Aaron Diehl – “Aries” from his latest album Zodiac Suite Listen Here
Mary Lou Williams wasn’t just ahead of her time, in many regards she’s ahead of ours too. The world is still hesitant to place the genius crown onto women in general, and sadly even more hesitant to place such praise on a Black woman in particular. But pianist Aaron Diehl faces no such hardship in recognizing the genius of Mary Lou Williams and the orchestral splendor of her Zodiac Suite. Penned in 1945 the piece never received the full orchestrated recording it so obviously deserves. On Diehl’s new album he reopened up the book with a great sound quartet and orchestra and gave Williams’ magnum opus the attention it deserves. It’s hard to pick one representative track, but Aries comes the closest to capturing the overall scope of the work.
Sly5thAve – “Big Brother feat. Daniel Wytantis” from his new album Liberation Listen Here
Sly5thAve is rising out of the fertile Snarky Puppy/Ghost-Note family to establish his own voice as an uber-talented composer/producer and sax player. The new record Liberation sounds like a business card record meant to tell the world about all the different styles/textures that Sly can bring to the table. But it hangs together as a cohesive listen thanks to Sly5thAve’s expertise as a writer. I can’t imagine I’ll be spending many 2024 summer nights hanging where this record won’t be on repeat.
Thanks for checking out This Just In, and be sure to shoot an email over to sean@jazz88.fm if you have any input about our music programming!
-Sean McPherson
