Jazz

Jocelyn Medina’s album, We Are Water, is a culmination of international sounds and genres. The music is soulful, funky, compelling, and rich.

Medina studied opera at Stanford University, which explains how rich her voice is and her ability to control it to paint lyrical pictures for her listener’s to imagine. Growing up surrounded by music, it is no surprise that Medina knows how to make music addictive and how to compel her listeners to keep their headphones on and the volume turned up.

Ray Brown’s Great Big Band has an utterly smooth, uncomplicated jazz album underneath its musical belt. How could anyone expect anything less from Ray Brown’s band? After all, the entire band was hand-picked by Ray Brown for their outstanding musical abilities.

Ray Brown, who wrote music for artists such as Count Basie, wanted his writings to finally give him some sort of recognition, hence the start of his “great big band.” Let us just say that it is pretty great. Now, the album I am so crazily praising is Kayak, a wonderfully masterful compilation of Brown’s own arrangements.

Decades ago, The Jeff Lorber Fusion pioneered the smooth jazz genre. We hear this style of music often throughout our day from segments on The Weather Channel to background music and adult contemporary radio. Now, the band returns to the niche they helped popularize with their much-anticipated release, Galaxy.

The album features 11 original tracks. This includes new arrangements for four of Lorber’s most-requested compositions, “The Underground,” “The Samba,” “City” and “Wizard Island,” the latter which launched the career of the one and only Kenny G.

Peter Scherr, an American bassist residing in China released his album Son of August in June of 2010. The album features the musical styling of several different artists including Michael Blake on saxophone, Brad Shepik on guitar, Tony Scherr on guitar, Mike Sarin on drums, and Peter Scherr on bass.