# New musics by Georgia Anne Muldrow, Matt Wilson, Esperanza Spalding and Fred Hersch, Charles Tolliver & Gerald Clayton: Photos, Videos, Sounds

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2020/06/02/new-musics-by-georgia-anne-muldrow-matt-wilson-esperanza-spalding-and-fred-hersch-charles-tolliver-gerald-clayton-photos-videos-sounds/
- Published: 2020-06-02T12:19:05+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Along with some duo magic from Esperanza Spalding and Fred Hersch, and a ray of
sunshine from Matt Wilson.**

**Georgia Anne Muldrow (as Jyoti), “This Walk”**

The singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Georgia Anne Muldrow has
a major profile along the bohemian fringes of R&B. But she hails from a jazz lineage,
and has carved out a parallel space as Jyoti, a name bestowed by Alice Coltrane.
Working as Jyoti, Muldrow has previously released two albums on her SomeOthaShip
label: _Ocotea _(2010) and _Denderah _(2013). _Mama, You Can Bet!_ will be released
on the same imprint in partnership with eOne Music on Aug. 28. Its lead single is“
This Walk,” which features a chantlike vocal over a heartbeat cadence. In her words,
it’s a song about how “violence can both ignite and snuff out a voice.”

[[

Muldrow plays all of the instruments on the album, with just one exception: on a
track called “Ra’s Noise (Thukumbado),” she features saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin.
She also includes a couple of remixes of Charles Mingus music: vestiges of the Muldrow
Meets Mingus program commissioned by Jason Moran for The Kennedy Center, and featured
in a 2017 episode of Jazz Night in America. This is music for our troubled moment,
restless but determined.

**Gerald Clayton, “Rejuvenation Agenda”**

Two summers ago, pianist Gerald Clayton played a week at The Village Vanguard with
an eye-catching group of peers: saxophonists Logan Richardson and Walter Smith III,
bassist Joe Sanders, and drummer Marcus Gilmore. Clayton recently signed to Blue
Note Records, and his first album out of the gate was recorded during that run. 
The label has just released its first single, a composition titled “Rejuvenation
Agenda,” which features the sort of flowing eighth-note groove that Clayton and 
his cohort have made into a calling card.

“The idea of having a recording of a live concert takes on a new meaning now that
we’re unable to actually gather anymore,” Clayton says in a press announcement for
the album, which he’s titled _Happening: Live at the Village Vanguard._“I would 
hope that, when we do return to some kind of normalcy, people are more inspired 
than ever to recognize that this music is happening, that it’s a living art form.
We need to actually go to those shows. We need to be in those rooms and be part 
of that experience. I hope this album can offer people a little bit of an escape
from this isolation, that it transports them back to the time when we were all able
to congregate and celebrate our shared love.”

**Esperanza Spalding and Fred Hersch, “But Not For Me”**

Speaking of timely dispatches from the Vanguard: Esperanza Spalding and Fred Hersch
have just released a five-song collection from one of their duo sets there in 2018.
_Live at the Village Vanguard: __Rough Mix EP _is available on Bandcamp only during
the month of June, with all proceeds going to the Jazz Foundation of America’s COVID
Musician Relief Fund.

[[

Spalding is on vocals (but not bass) throughout the set, which opens with a sparkling
take on the standard “But Not For Me.” (Listen for how she playfully pokes fun at
some of Ira Gershwin’s more high-flown lyrics around the two-minute mark, a la Ella
Fitzgerald.) Her rapport with Hersch couldn’t be sunnier, and his solo piano work
is as impeccable as you’d expect. All this and a noble cause: what more could you
want?

**Charles Tolliver, “Blue Soul”**

The august trumpeter and composer Charles Tolliver has covered a lot of ground over
the last half-century, and it would be fair to say he has nothing left to prove.
Why, then, is there still so much driving urgency in his music? Consider “Blue Soul,”
the first single from a forthcoming album, _Connect. _

A hard-boppish tune with a backbeat groove, “Blue Soul” finds Tolliver at the helm
of an all-star band with Jesse Davis on alto saxophone, Keith Brown on piano, Buster
Williams on bass and Lenny White on drums. Recorded for the British label Gearbox
Records, the album also features a guest turn by saxophonist Binker Golding, a mainstay
of the London scene.

**Matt Wilson Quartet, “Hug”**

Finally this week: could you use a hug? We posed this question a little over a month
ago, when we featured the title track of Matt Wilson’s new album in one of our first
quarantine-era editions of Take Five. Now there’s a video to accompany the song,
and we thought it was too sweet not to share, as a WBGO premiere.

![Georgia Anne Muldrow has a new album under her Jyoti moniker, Mama, You Can Bet!](
https://i0.wp.com/www.wbgo.org/sites/wbgo/files/styles/medium/public/202005/8C2A3F65-
4E99-4EF6-8AED-77949C527989_0.jpeg?w=640&ssl=1)

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