Bass CDs
New Album: Hazelrigg Brothers – SYNCHRONICITY: An interpretation of the album by THE POLICE
New Album: Hazelrigg Brothers – SYNCHRONICITY: An interpretation of the album by THE POLICE
SYNCHRONICITY: An interpretation of the album by THE POLICE, featuring George Hazelrigg (piano), Geoff Hazelrigg (bass) & John O’Reilly Jr. (drums).
Commemorating and Celebrating the Fortieth Anniversary of the Fifth & Final Studio Album by The Police
What The Critics Are Saying About the Trio’s Debut album, Songs We Like
“…the group has searched for – and found – a process of recording that captures to perfection the experience of hearing a piano trio in the real world – warm and interactive, organic, the bass embracing drums like it does from the seat in one of the front rows of a small jazz club, with the piano dancing inside that musical abrazo, on this highly-engaging debut”
– All About Jazz
“I can’t recommend this album highly enough and I hope to see the Hazelrigg brothers live on the European stage’s sooner rather than later.” – Jazz in Europe
“…one of the best pure trio recordings of the year” – Audiophile Audition
Perfectly expressing the political and social temper of the early 1980s, the original landmark album, Synchronicity, was a near-constant soundtrack to George and Geoff Hazelrigg’s upbringing, and a huge influence on their artistic future. Hazelrigg Brothers celebrates the 40th anniversary of this classic album with Synchronicity: An interpretation of the album by The Police, an audiophile experience full of the fire, power and dynamics that have become their trademark. The album was recorded in one room using two stereo microphones, captured in DSD. Available June 2, 2023 on 180 gram vinyl (mastered from DSD), CD, and digital download through Native DSD, on OuterMarkerRecords.com. “Murder By Numbers” will be available only in digital formats (CD and download).
The origins of this recording go back forty years to Princeton, NJ with two precocious kids tuning into MTV and discovering a whole world of music. The opening notes and images of The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” captivated their young minds, and they were entranced by the videos for “Synchronicity II” and “Wrapped Around Your Finger.”
“There were a ton of videos that we saw on MTV, but those had such major influence. That shapes your brain when you’re a kid. That record is in our blood,” said Geoff. George added, “Synchronicity I is punk as f*ck! It’s so exciting when you hear that riff in the intro. Also, that is the bit of music that Geoff used to test VLCs in the first years of Hazelrigg Industries.” On that note, outside of playing music, the brothers’ “day job” is Hazelrigg Industries HazelriggIndustries.com, as designers and manufacturers of high-end studio recording gear used by top producers, engineers and artists around the world.
The Hazelrigg Brothers did an arrangement of “Synchronicity II” for a recording they made in the nineties, so the idea for this album had been marinating for a while. George elaborates, “We’ve been on this kick with The Police for a long time. We worked on the arrangement for “Miss Gradenko” for years. It went through dozens of iterations before we wound up with what we have on this record.”
This album was born out of love for Synchronicity, arguably The Police’s crowning achievement, and a desire to commemorate and celebrate the album’s fortieth anniversary. “I remember being in high school and having that record on nonstop; I had it in my Walkman forever,” said Geoff. Getting right to point, George added, “I think so many of the songs on the record really resonate, I mean, they’re all so good,” a sentiment most of us can wholeheartedly agree with.
More on the music with the Hazelrigg Brothers:
Synchronicity I
Geoff: It’s got that sequencer part, and we do some of that mechanical kind of playing, but it draws you in, in a hypnotic kind of way. It’s a cool opener, and as a group I think we excel at playing really dynamically. It’s not about how loud you are, it’s how soft you get, because everybody’s always playing as loud as they can. But how soft can you get? And with that tune, we really go from here all the way down. You know, it’s this kind of push pull dynamic thing that happens while maintaining that level of intensity the entire way through. That’s the trick.
Walking in your footsteps
George: It’s about dinosaurs.
Geoff: Yeah. Who doesn’t like dinosaurs?
O My God
George: It’s an illustration of how they were still an underground punk band. “O My God” is questioning religion during the Cold War, which was still a taboo thing to do at the time.
Mother
Geoff: That was the blues on the record, because every jazz album needs a blues, right?
George: This was a challenging one. That song is way too f*cking punk-ass. And it’s a 12 bar blues.
Geoff: That song is about the lyrics, right? And it’s not just the lyrics, it’s the lyrical performance.
George: He doesn’t sing it, right? He speaks it: “The telephone is ringing. Is that my mother on the phone?” And so we had to adapt a melody that wasn’t actually part of the song. But how were we going to capture the lyric of it, and then how were we going to frame it so there was something to grab onto? It was like we need to make it sound like… Chopin, you know?
Miss Gradenko
George: The ultimate Cold War song.
Geoff: You know, it’s only two minutes, but that song has more notes in it than probably any other song on the album.
George: When we first arranged this song, I did not have the facility, the technique, to play it. I went through years of piano studies to finally get to the point where I can play it as well as I can now. I credit that two-minute piece for more of my later technical development as a piano player than almost anything else.
Synchronicity II
George: It has elements of the other songs before it, and sort of puts a bow on that entire first half of the record. There’s a lot of chaos. The breakdown section is the same as the ending of “O my God.” It’s like this chaos that you’re barely, barely holding onto. And so I’m doing a lot of muting and stuff and Geoff’s doing all this screechy bass stuff and John’s playing screechy cymbal sounds. It’s a lot of sound design.
Every Breath You Take
Geoff: The mega-hit from the record.
George: There’s that iconic guitar line, which we carry through the entire song, other than the bridge section and the outro. I don’t play any other notes. It’s a monophonic line that I carry the entire time. Geoff’s playing that melody in that baritone range that has a certain sinister element to it, and it becomes this two-voice piece.
King of Pain
George: Well, we didn’t have a marimba, so John played an mbira. That is the tune where we wind up sounding most like a jazz trio. By the time the outro hits, we’ve distressed the song completely.
Wrapped Around Your Finger
Geoff: Another song that has a lot of lyrical imagery, and our job was to just take that mysterious imagery and do our best to apply it without the words.
George: When Geoff plays the melody on the second verse, he hits the high note and slides to that next note. There’s something in the piano that echoes his high note, and it sounds like there’s an echo on the bass.
Geoff: If you listen to the last chorus, it sounds like we overdub a synth in the middle. It’s just the way the composite sounds come together.
Tea in the Sahara
George: What “Tea in the Sahara” captures is how beautiful all the instruments in that room sound. It captures what is so phenomenal about that 1887 Steinway and just the massive size and tone of Geoff’s 7/8 bass and the delicacy of that birch Gretsch kit, and how John approaches playing cymbals. It’s all just the delicate – impossibly quiet at times – detail, of just how fine those instruments are.
Murder by Numbers
Geoff: I think harmonically and form-wise, it already lends itself to the format probably more than any other song on the record. I mean, it starts with a drum solo and it ends with a drum solo.
Please Visit: Hazelriggbrothers.com
Bass CDs
New Album: Zev Feldman’s Time Traveler Recordings’ Buster Williams ‘Pinnacle’ Muse Catalog Reissue
A precious, but previously elusive gem by the brilliant bass player Buster Williams will re-enter the jazz firmament with Time Traveler Recordings’ April 18 reissue of Pinnacle, the NEA Jazz Master’s celebrated 1975 debut album as a leader.
The package, an exclusive RSD release on LP, is being reissued for the very first time since its original release. It is the latest installment in TTR’s Muse Master Edition Series, unearthing the long-lost masterworks from the catalog of the historic Muse Records. The series is a collaboration with Virgin Music Group and Craft Recordings, spearheaded by TTR co-founder, producer and “Jazz Detective” Zev Feldman.
Remastered AAA directly from the original analog tapes by Matthew Lutthans at the Mastering Lab in Salina, Kansas, Pinnacle is pressed on 180-gram vinyl by Optimal. It will be issued in a hand-numbered, high-gloss tip-on sleeve, featuring a new liner essay by journalist Mike Flynn and a rare period photograph of Williams by Raymond Ross. The package also includes the original 1975 notes by Elliot Meadow who produced the original session which was recorded at Blue Rock Studios in NYC.
Thirty-three years old at the time of these August 1975 sessions, Camden, New Jersey native Charles Anthony “Buster” Williams was already an acclaimed and in-demand jazz bassist. He’d spent most of the 1960s touring and recording with Nancy Wilson, also freelancing for the likes of the Jazz Crusaders, Harold Land, and the Miles Davis Quintet—substituting for Ron Carter for several months in 1967—where he met and worked with Herbie Hancock. Williams joined Hancock’s Mwandishi band in 1971, placing him on the cutting edge of the new jazz fusion movement.
Pinnacle, recorded after Mwandishi’s breakup, finds Williams still very much informed by that idiom of funky, experimental jazz. The band includes fellow Mwandishi alum Billy Hart on drums and fellow Miles veteran Sonny Fortune on soprano saxophone and flute, along with legendary trumpeter Woody Shaw and a venturesome crew including saxophonist Earl Turbinton, keyboardist Onaje Allan Gumbs and percussionist Guilherme Franco. (Vocalists Suzanne Klewan and Marcus also join on two tracks.)
Williams blazed new trails in the use of electric bass in jazz: “A pioneer among jazz doublers—musicians equally adept on upright and electric bass,” notes Flynn in his new essay. But, while he features his Fender electric bass on the thumping opener “The Hump,” on most of the album Williams plays the acoustic upright bass that had always been his first love. It anchors the darker, funkier journeys the band takes on “Pinnacle” and “Batuki” and sets the swinging tone for the acoustic numbers, the deep spiritual jazz “Noble Eagle” and the breezy, playful “Tayamisha.”
“What I love about the acoustic bass is what I have to do to get music out of it,” Williams muses. “The sound I get depends all on me, not the help of an amp. The instrument relates to my heart; it’s alive, it has emotion, it’s not just a piece of wood.”
“Bass players are often described—perhaps unfairly—as the anchor of the band,” writes Flynn. “But in the hands of a master like Buster Williams, the bass becomes something much more: the engine, the heartbeat, the mellifluous core driving the music forward.”
Williams composed four of the album’s five tracks, making Pinnacle a brilliant first showcase for his writing as well as his playing and bandleading. “Buster’s writing abilities have not gone unnoticed in the past,” observes Meadows in his original liner notes for the album. “The writing for this date is fresh and varied. ‘The Hump,’ which should make you get up and do something, contrasts with the haunting serenity of the title song. Then ‘Tayamisha’ (named for Buster’s daughter) is light and airy as opposed to the intensity of ‘Noble Ego.’”
A prophetic release, Pinnacle forecasts the subsequent 50 years that Williams has spent balancing forward-looking musical adventures with the bounty and rigor of the tradition. “The title says it all,” writes Flynn. “Pinnacle wasn’t just a debut. It was a statement of arrival—an artist stepping forward from a prolific past into a fearless, unbounded future.” And, under the curation of Time Traveler’s Muse Master Edition Series, it now sounds better than ever.
Monk con Clave is the new album from the Carlos Henriquez Big Band, out now! Therein, bassist and bandleader Carlos Henriquez roots the large-ensemble recording in his long relationship with the work of Thelonious Monk and the cultural history of San Juan Hill.
He brings together a multigenerational band drawn from members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and its extended community, including percussionist Pedrito Martínez, trumpeter Mike Rodriguez, pianists Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Osmany Paredes, and Robert Rodriguez, vocalist Anthony Almonte, flutist and vocalist Jeremy Bosch. The project places Monk’s compositions beside original works shaped by Bronx memory and Nuyorican identity.
Few figures in modern art carry the singular presence of Thelonious Monk. His unmistakable melodic contours, harmonic tensions, and rhythmic logic continue to define the jazz repertoire, with musicians reinterpreting his work across generations. Monk lived in Manhattan’s San Juan Hill neighborhood before its disappearance during the construction of Lincoln Center, and his sound still carries the imprint of that vanished New York community.
Henriquez’s work as a bassist, composer, and bandleader has drawn sustained critical recognition across the jazz world. JazzTimes has praised his playing as “clean, crisp and to-the-point…jet fuel for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra,” while noting that “anyone surprised by the depth and breadth of Henriquez’s talents simply hasn’t been paying attention.” DownBeat has described him as “an emerging master in the Latin jazz idiom,” and WRTI has called his Grammy-nominated album The South Bronx Story “a terrific album,” highlighting his rare ability to unite Afro-Latin clave and jazz swing with few peers.
Henriquez built his artistic life through decades at Jazz at Lincoln Center. He joined the organization in the late 1990s as a teenager performing with Wynton Marsalis, became a full-time orchestra member, and spent years touring, recording, arranging, curating, and directing performances. “It’s almost like a mini Wynton Marsalis throughout those 30 years,” he says. “My participation there has been basically my whole life. It’s my home and a place where I’m gonna continue to develop and to lead.”
Monk’s voice has remained central to that life. “Something stood out,” Henriquez says. “It made me feel comfortable. It made me feel like I also had a voice in this music.” He hears Monk’s rhythmic language through his own identity as “a Nuyorican — somebody born in New York City whose parents are from Puerto Rico.” The music on Monk con Clave grew from that connection because he “was already listening to his music and very attracted to his uniqueness and him being himself.”
Henriquez assembled the band for what he calls “a great moment for me, especially for this project.” The session carried humor and familiarity. “Everybody’s on point. If you mess up a note, everybody starts jumping on you. That’s the fun part… all the talking amongst friends to keep our spirits and our attention span as high as possible.” During one solo, Rubalcaba stunned the room so completely that the musicians looked around “like they saw a ghost, like they saw an alien.”
The album opens with “Round Midnight,” where, Henriquez says, Rubalcaba’s playing “becomes water and takes the shape of whatever he wants to do.” “I Mean You” captures what Henriquez calls “the vibe of Afro-Cuban music at its best.”
“El Son De Teo” unfolds through a slow Son atmosphere connecting the homage to Teo Macero, creating “a real Son vibe.” His original composition “San Juan Hill” reflects “the ups and downs of being Black American and Puerto Rican Latino during the transition period, with Robert Moses having to move people out of their locations.” On “Ugly Beauty,” Henriquez shifts Monk’s triple meter into four and draws on the ballad language of Beny Moré, while a vocal performance by Anthony Almonte delivers what he describes as “luscious sounds.”
“Evidence of Four and One” references Monk’s classic compositions “Evidence,” first recorded in 1948, and “Four in One,” a formally unusual work from 1951. Here Henriquez manages to combine both tunes as if it were one. Built on rapid sixteenth-note with both melodic lines overlapping. “Raise Four” follows the lineage of Machito and Chico O’Farrill through a six-eight pulse and the explosion of Pedro Martinez & Jesus Ricardo.
“Green Chimneys” carries a Mozambique feel that features piccolo flute and bass on the melody. “Who Knows” stands as “a reflection of people I look up to — Tito Puente, Machito, Chico O’Farrill — Afro-Cuban and Afro-Puerto Rican.” The closing “Plena Azul Blue Monk” draws on Puerto Rican plena tradition, where “the trombone just playing the melody” evokes figures such as Papa Vázquez, William Cepeda, and Rafael Hernández.
For Henriquez, the music returns to the place that shaped him.
Well-respected roots rock/Americana sidemen; drummer JIMMY LESTER (Billy Joe Shaver, Webb Wilder, Los Straitjackets), bass player/songwriter/singer/bandleader MARK W. WINCHESTER (Planet Rockers, EmmyLou Harris, Brian Setzer), and keyboard player KEVIN MCKENDREE (Lee Roy Parnell, Delbert McClinton, Brian Setzer) form super-groove-group LESTER WINCHESTER MCKENDREE to go it alone, together, on their debut collaborative release, THEY GOT IT ALL (Times Three Records/MAY 29, 2026).
The drum, bass and piano (with vocal) trio recorded over two “live” days at McKendree’s Rock House studio in Franklin, TN early this year, focusing on a collection of Winchester’s original songs the three had been performing together on local club dates, brand new material (the unique origins of which we’ll get to), as well as two instrumentals collaboratively conjured in the studio.
Originally feeling the power of their locked-in, feel-based natural groove while backing E. Street Band bassist Garry Tallent on his solo album and brief tour in 2017, Winchester says he wanted to feel that again. “On that tour, Garry would let his musicians do an original song or two of their own, and I never forgot how great it felt and sounded to sing my songs with Kevin and Jimmy, or how Jimmy and I backed Kevin’s instrumental piano romps.”
In recent years, as Lester Winchester McKendree began performing live, an evolution began taking place with regard to Winchester’s instrument of choice. “I was changing strings one day and started thinking about the band Morphine, and how their frontman Mark Sandman, rest in peace, played a 2-string bass. So I took a YouTube deep dive, got inspired, and only put two strings back on my own bass”, Winchester explains. The sonically unique, melodically interesting result made the decision for the band to record an album a no-brainer.
Songwriters will often say a guitar new to them will “have songs in it”, or that writing on an instrument one is not totally familiar with can open up new creative possibilities. Winchester described it this way: “Songs just started falling out of that thing. Sandman played with a slide, but I just used my long fingers. The 2-String is tuned in fifths, and I started finding melodies and riffs, and for the first time ever, really, wrote all the music to pieces before any lyrics came.”
About a year after stringing his own bass with only two, Eastwood Guitars serendipitously (for Winchester) brought to market a replica “Sandman Model” 2-String bass. Winchester immediately ordered one. “When I got it, it was tuned in a different key than my Silvertone, but sure enough, songs started falling outta that thing too.” The songs that ‘fell out’ of that Sandman Model 2-String bass, by way of Winchester’s creative mind, make up the bulk of THEY GOT IT ALL, and the sparse fire and crisp energy that McKendree’s piano and Lester’s drumming bring to these tunes infuses them with, well, ‘cool’. The 2-String bass running separately, but simultaneously through bass and guitar amps, gives the trio a guitarish crunchiness you wouldn’t expect with no 6-stringer in the fold.
All three of these accomplished musicians’ careers started commingling in Nashville in the late 1980s.
JIMMY LESTER, a Nashville, TN native, moved from Billy Joe Shaver’s band to the original drum chair for Webb Wilder and the Beatnecks. Lester also established himself as a master of surf-rock drum style as a founding member of Los Straightjackets, which coincided with the
formation of roots rock cult hero band The Planet Rockers, of which Winchester was a founding member on upright bass.
Originally from Monroe, NC, MARK W. WINCHESTER moved to Nashville in 1988. He went on to join Emmylou Harris’ Nash Ramblers, before a stint as a Music Row staff songwriter, where he penned a hit for Randy Travis (‘Would I?’). He later joined the Brian Setzer Orchestra, and has had several of his songs recorded by Setzer, including ‘Rooster Rock’ on which Setzer had Winchester sing lead vocal.
KEVIN McKENDREE, from the Washington D.C. area, came to Nashville as the piano man for Lee Roy Parnell and quickly established himself as a real-deal roots and blues keyboardist, eventually playing on multiple Grammy-winning albums. McKendree (as well as Winchester) played with blues mastermind Mike Henderson, Brian Setzer’s Rock-A-Billy Riot, and The Brian Setzer Orchestra. McKendree’s 20+ year partnership with Delbert McClinton, as musician/co-writer/producer/engineer, led to the 2020 Grammy-winning McClinton album TALL, DARK, & HANDSOME -recorded by McKendree at his Rock House studio.
It was there at the Rock House, with McKendree on keys and control board, that he, Lester, and Winchester, with no bosses, no agenda, and no pressure, laid down the live, loose, properly boned, expertly fleshed, lyrically interesting, groovy aural document that is THEY GOT IT ALL.
Maybe they do.
Visit online at www.markwwinchester.com
Oteil Burbridge & Lamar Williams Jr. Champion Love Over Hate in New Single “Hush” | New Album ‘The Offering’ Out May 1.
Bassist Oteil Burbridge and vocalist Lamar Williams Jr. continue the rollout of their forthcoming collaborative album The Offering, with the release of its second single, “Hush”. A slow-burning Southern soul meditation rooted in love, peace, and emotional clarity, the track is a centerpiece on the album with a potent, thematic statement, in Williams’ words to “block out all of that nonsense” and “remember that there is more love in the world than hate.” The full-length album arrives May 1 via Flóki Studios, recorded on Iceland’s northern coast and produced by drummer, engineer, and Soulive co-founder Alan Evans.
While much of The Offering grew out of Burbridge’s banjo-based writing, “Hush” emerged from he and Williams’ shaping a deliberate sonic vision. Burbridge says they were “trying to capture a more old school Memphis, Macon, Muscle Shoals vibe,” leaning into a Southern soul feel that fits Williams’s phrasing. The end result is a song that is unhurried with a deep pocket that allows the groove and the song’s message breathe and stand at the forefront.
The album features an all-star lineup of drummer John Morgan Kimock, percussionist Weedie Braimah, organist Melvin Seals of the Jerry Garcia Band, pianist and violinist Jason Crosby, guitarists Tom Guarna and Jaden Lehman — musicians whose overlapping histories connect the Allman Brothers Band, Dead & Company, the Jerry Garcia Band, Soulive, and West African percussion traditions.
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Pops Magellan unveils her debut live EP, DAMAGE (Live at EastWest Studios), a three-track performance project recorded at the legendary EastWest Studios. Captured in Studio One using one-take camera performance, the session offers a raw and intentional introduction to Magellan’s artistic world as a solo artist, bandleader, and producer.
The live EP features three compositions from her DAMAGE era:
“Misunderstood,” featuring Taylor Graves and Robert Sput Searight
“Deep Thoughts,” featuring Noa Kahn
“Drive Complaining,” featuring Robert Sput Searight and Artur Menezes
Originally released as a series of live performance videos on YouTube, the session now lives as a body of work, highlighting Magellan’s ability to merge high-level musicianship with groove-driven, emotionally resonant compositions. Each track unfolds as a conversation between players, balancing technical precision with spontaneity.
Recorded in a single day at EastWest, the session reflects Magellan’s commitment to capturing music in its most honest form. With a focus on raw live interplay, DAMAGE (Live at EastWest Studios) sets a clear tone: this is an artist building her identity in real time.
The session features a handpicked group of collaborators. Robert Searight, founding member of Ghost-Note, brings his signature groove, alongside virtuoso Noa Kahn, acclaimed guitarist Artur Menezes, and Grammy winner Taylor Graves, who co-produced two songs on the original EP.
“It was a way to start a strong foundation for the world I’m building.” says Pops. “I wanted to make something beautiful, strong, and honest, something I’d be proud of looking back.”
Pops leads every aspect of the project, from curating collaborators to shaping the sonic and visual identity. The result is a refined yet powerful debut live statement that positions her at the intersection of musicianship, artistry, and modern performance culture.
With more music on the way and live shows to be announced soon, DAMAGE (Live at EastWest Studios) marks the beginning of a larger vision still unfolding.
Stream DAMAGE (Live at EastWest Studios) HERE
Watch the Live Session HERE
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