This week’s Cosmic Jazz has a mixture of new and old sounds. We tend to think of Patrice Rushen as a jazz fusion/funk artist but – like Herbie Hancock – her jazz credentials are impressive. Listen to Haw Right Now from Rushen’s first album Prelusion (1974) to find out. There’s plenty of heavyweight jazzers on offer as support too – Joe Henderson, Hadley Caliman, Ngudu and Kenneth Nash.
Also in tonight’s show, music from two of our favourite albums right now – Robert Glasper’s Black Radio and Esperanza Spalding’s Radio Music Society – along with a track each off a couple of impressive New York trio releases from Steve Lehman and Vijay Iyer.
Classic older sounds are represented by a trio of great tenor players – Joe Henderson, Sonny Rollins and Jimmy Heath – and, to complete the symmetry, three female vocalist old and new. It’s all on this week’s Cosmic Jazz.
- Robert Glasper Experiment – Black Radio
- Esperanza Spalding – Radio Song
- Patrice Rushen – Haw Right Now
- Joe Henderson – Relaxin’ at Camarillo
- Sonny Rollins – Notes for Eddie
- Jimmy Heath – Heritage Hum
- Azanyah – I Will Surely Come Again
- Zara McFarlane – Chiaroscuro
- Carmen Lundy – So Beautiful
- Steve Lehman Trio – Alloy
- Vijay Iyer Trio – Wildflower
Really enjoyed the show this week. Highlight for me was Steve Lehman – spiky tenor sounds yet identifiably in the great traditions of Rollins et al. And good to hear another track from the Henderson album – late in Henderson’s long career but part of that late flowering that included The State of the Tenor.