New Music Monday – T. S. Monk, Alex Sipiagin, and Milwaukee Jazz Orchestra

Tune in for New Music Monday highlights on Monday, May 30, at Noon, on Lunchtime with Arturo Gómez.

T.S. Monk Live: “Two Continents, One Groove”
The son of the legendary pianist-composer Thelonious Monk, T.S. is a talented drummer and bandleader in his own right. He drummed for his father during the latter stages of Monk’s career and then went on to team up with his sister to form a successful funk group before returning to jazz and releasing several albums. Thelonious Sphere Monk III is also known as “Toot” after his dad’s song for him “Little Rootie Tootie”, his sister Barbara also had a song penned for her, “Boo Boo’s Birthday”. This is the first T.S. live recording, it was recorded in Bern, Switzerland, and Harlem, NY with a stellar cast of musicians including Helen Sung-piano and Dave Stryker-guitar among others.

Alex Sipiagin: “Ascent to the Blues”
Russian-born trumpeter Allex left his hometown of Yaroslavl at 13 years old to pursue his dream of becoming a professional jazz musician in New York City, his dream has come true! His versatile style has led him to amass an impressive discography: over 20 albums as a leader and many more as an accompanist. His new outing features Aurora’s own Rudy Royston-drums, fellow Russian Boris Kozlov-bass, Art Hirahara-piano, and Diego Rivera-tenor sax, an ensemble that could be easily called the Posi-Tine Records All-Stars.

Milwaukee Jazz Orchestra: “Take It All”
This time out the swingin’ band out of “Brew Town” chose to record all of the six songs on this release with compositions by Wisconsin-born writers. There’s little doubt that the most well-known of the half dozen tunes is the immortal “Sweet Georgia Brown” which has nearly 2,000 versions as well as being the theme song for the internationally renowned Harlem Globetrotters basketball team., the origins of this time-honored standard caught this writer completely by surprise which is why I like to say that jazz is discovery!

Every Monday for the past 19 years starting at Noon, I debut the latest arrivals to the KUVO Jazz library, many of them are debuted ahead of their official release date. In addition to the music comments, I’ll provide a few tidbits about the artist in particular if it’s a new or up-and-coming artist.

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