NEW RELEASE: CORY WEEDS & JERRY WELDON –

Two-tenor winner.  

Cory Weeds’s Cellar label features some of the best tenor saxophonists in the business, Eric Alexander and Grant Stewart among those, young guns like Jacob Chung and not least veteran class act Jerry Weldon, New Yorker that played with Lionel Hampton, Brother Jack McDuff, Cedar Walton, George Benson. Big man with a big sound, and a head full of hot ideas, teaming up with Weeds himself on Weeds Meets Weldon in a band that worked together for a handful of gigs, featuring pianist Miles Black, bassist John Lee and drummer Jesse Cahill.

You get two flavors for the price of one, Weldon’s bossy and energetic style and Weeds’s lean, more Mobley-ish way of playing, firmly based in the hard bop vein, stretching its limit with the challenging ‘sleepers’ by Clifford Jordan, Princess and Toy. Just As Though You Were Here is rich with nuance and melodic invention, for minute after minute, a prime example of Weldon the balladeer. Miles Black speaks his witty and buoyant piece in Freddie Redd’s Latin-tinged Olé.

They all find joy in the archetypical changes of Weeds’s fast-paced 323 Shuter, a kinetic ending of a sympathetic effort to carry on the rich tradition of the tenor duet.