The Listening Guide
🎶 The listening guide: five albums, released during the past twelve months, chosen around a weekly theme 🎶
This week’s theme is big bands and jazz orchestras, taking in five large ensemble records released during the past twelve months. Maria Schneider’s GRAMMY award-winning album Data Lords is split into two sections: one reflecting on the digital world and the other the natural world, and features players such as Johnathan Blake, Donny McCaslin, and Ben Monder. Jihye Lee—a winner of Berklee’s Duke Ellington Prize—describes her new album, Daring Mind, as ‘a documentation of my first four years in New York’, and has assembled a group including fellow large ensemble visionary Quinsin Nachoff, trombone player Jennifer Wharton, and pianist Haeun Joo to perform its nine compositions. The Uptown Jazz Tentet, co-led by horn players Brandon Lee, Willie Applewhite, and James Burton III, showcase their tight and dynamic straight ahead sound on latest release What’s Next, whilst the multi-talented Fabia Mantwill explores an expansive sounds that centres the harp and strings on her debut orchestra album EM.PERIENCE, which features guest soloists Kurt Rosenwinkel and Ben Wendel alongside its twenty-five-strong core band. Guitarist Rodrigo Faina and his Change Ensemble complete the set with their record Different Roots, which incorporates spoken word and modern classical elements, with contributions from the Metropole Orkest. You can check out and support these albums on Bandcamp, except for Maria Schneider and Fabia Mantwill’s records, which you can support via their respective websites!
Jihye Lee Orchestra – Daring Mind
Uptown Jazz Tentet – What's Next
Fabia Mantwill Orchestra – EM.PERIENCE
Album of the Week
Our NQ Jazz album of the week is a beautiful record from Mabuta’s Shane Cooper, made in collaboration with Bokani Dyer (piano), Cara Stacey (umtshingo, umrhubhe, nyunga-nyunga, piano), Daliwonga Tshangela (cello) and three percussionists: Gontse Makhene, Micca Manganye, and Jonno Sweetman. Described as a ‘sprawling jazz-concrète project’, it is the result of their collective composing, improvising and investigative recording, and later tape splicing from Cooper. Check out the album on Bandcamp!
Classic Album
This week’s classic album is a meeting between two icons, captured for released on the Verve label in October, 1965. Fitzgerald sings beautifully on tunes including Strayhorn classics A Flower Is A Lovesome Thing and Passion Flower, with Ellington conducting, arranging, and playing on the sessions. Check it out and streaming services.