Tim Ray
Excursions and Adventures
CD Release show
 

7.10 • 6:30p • Starlight Square • 84 Bishop Allen Dr., Cambridge, MA 02139 • Tim Ray Trio with Terri Lyne Carrington and John Lockwood • Release show postponement due to Covid • Click here for tickets
 

WCS Artist and Berklee College of Music Associate Professor Steven Kirby publishes new book
Available now on Berklee Press Click here to purchase!
 

Like many serious musicians, John Stein was trying to find a way to reach his audience during the Covid-19 shutdown. He had just released Watershed, a career-defining recording to mark his planned retirement from Berklee College of Music where he was an acclaimed educator. When the tour in support of Watershed was scrapped due to the pandemic, Stein and the indefatigable Neal Weiss at Whaling City Sound came up with the idea of bringing Stein and his trio—with Ed Lucie on bass guitar and Mike Connors on drums—to the New Bedford Art Museum for a live-streamed performance. The show was an enormous creative success. While it was skillfully documented on video, Stein also had sound engineer John Farrell capture and mix the audio. From the opener, a take on Sonny Rollins’ “Alfie’s Theme,” to the closing, upbeat “Happy Hour,” a Stein original, the recording is a pure celebration of bristling energy and brilliant, intuitive performances. It’s the sound of unleashed happiness as embraced by three musicians, accursed pandemic or not, born to play beautiful jazz music.

7.25 • Music in the Barn Series • 4-6p • 4100 Main Rd., Tiverton, RI • with Ed Lucie and Mike Connors • Requested donation: $20 per person • Covid vaccination required • The Barn seats only 80 people, email margueritec.rizzi@gmail.com to RSVP
 

Greg Abate
Magic Dance: The Music of Kenny Barron
Click here to purchase

 

There’s a beautiful marriage happening with Greg Abate’s Magic Dance. It’s the union between Abate’s multi-instrumental gift of bebop and Kenny Barron’s varied and sublime compositions. Abate, with Barron, who handles keys on this recording session, are soulmates sharing this epic musical space. On their own, Barron’s melodies are transcendent. In Abate’s skillful hands, thanks to his ability to shift between alto, tenor, baritone and soprano saxes and flute, the material takes on new tones, colors and patterns. One of the liberties Abate took with the material involved varying the choice and number of horns on these tracks. On two tracks, he even went so far as to arrange and overdub four additional sax parts, modeled on the reed section of the traditional big band, which give Barron's lush sounds even greater texture and intricacy.   
                                                       
Underneath it all is the hot-shot rhythm section of bass player Dezron Douglas and drummer Johnathan Blake, a New York City tandem born to support and elevate these arrangements. In fact, the ensemble work throughout this two-disc project is incredible, and reaffirms the health of 'real' bebop, a genre in which Abate has, through a five-decade career, been a dependable flame keeper. With this collaboration, Abate, with sidemen Barron, Douglas and Blake prove that the glory of straight-ahead jazz can still be purposeful, exhilarating, and, above all, like all great marriages, faithful and true. 

8.14 • 8p • Paramount Arts Center • 1300 Winchester Ave, Ashland, KY 41101 • with Bob Thompson, Ryan McGillicuddy, and Lee McKinney • Click here for tickets

Greg Murphy
Cool Water
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Peaked at #6, 18 weeks on radio chart
 

It is glad tidings indeed that Whaling City Sound announces the release of a new Greg Murphy recording. In fact, the news is almost as joyous as the sound of Murphy’s piano. Cool Water is both heartwarming and exhilarating. Greg’s fingers find delicate and exciting ways of expressing themselves across the keys. It is the sound of a blissful talent given a new lease in both life and career, as well as the opportunity to rediscover his true and glorious gift. The recording opens with the ebullient “Chim Chim Cher-ee,” segues into a chancy take on Steely Dan’s “Green Earrings,” careening through a battery of brisk melodies and beautiful playing, including the astonishing “Cuttin’ Trane’s Corners,” a dark, surprising cover of Wayne Shorter’s “Lost,” and the funk-filled closing celebration, “You Decide.” Featuring Murphy’s bandmates Jeff “Tain” Watts on drums, Eric Wheeler on bass, and a bevy of special guests, Cool Water is just that, long and fresh, a ride with the top down, rife with optimism and full of freedom and discovery. Greg Murphy is clearly glad to be back and playing music again, and we should all be thankful for it.

7.10, 7.17, 7.24 •  6-9p • Lorenzo's • Solo Piano • 1100 South Avenue • Staten Island, NY
7.11 • 12-4p Lorenzo's - Solo Piano
7.16 • 8-11p • Brother's Smokehouse • Greg Murphy Duo • 900 Route 17 N • Ramsey, NJ