New Music – 2016, Page 24

 
Renowned Quartet Yellowjackets
Celebrate 35 Years with Cohearence –
Available April 22 on Mack Avenue Records
 
Album Serves as Debut for Virtuoso
Australian Bassist Dane Alderson
 
An outgrowth of L.A. Express guitarist Robben Ford’s band founded in 1977, the Yellowjackets came to full buzzing flight four years later with its debut eponymous jazz-funk album, a salient introduction to a new-styled electric fusion of jazz and R&B–a modern take on Weather Report, if you will–for the post Return to Forever/Headhunters decade. The band was an immediate and controversial hit at the time when the jazz pendulum was beginning to swing back in the acoustic direction.

 
Saxophonist Marcus Strickland’s Twi-Life to Release New Project “Nihil Novi” on April 15th, 2016
 
“People have to be careful when they call something new,” says saxophonist and composer Marcus Strickland. “I think about what’s around me instead of trying to create something new. Everything is inspired by something else. Ecclesiastes says: ‘There’s nothing new under the sun.’”