For those of you not in the know, Blues and Cubes, the fourth album from The Jazz Professors on Flying Horse Records, is inspired by the profound art of Pablo Picasso.

The album explores Picasso’s work in parallel with groundbreaking 20th century jazz and it features original tracks from The Jazz Professors alongside compositions by Sidney Bechet and Charlie Parker.

The Jazz Professors is a sextet of American jazz musicians who have performed, recorded and toured with a veritable “who’s who” of the jazz realm. In addition, they are faculty members of the Jazz Studies program at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida.

1. Blue Lamp
2. Dora Maar
3. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
4. Blue Steel
5. Segment
6. View of Heaven
7. Promenade aux Champs-Élysées
8. Promenade in Blue
9. Picasso’s Blue Lobster
10. The Iberian

This quite wonderfully upbeat and wholly entertaining new album opens on the soft, sultry, late night vibe of Blue Lamp and the upbeat finger-snapper Dora Maar and then the band bring us the actively flirtatious Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, the easy breezy, summer’s haze of Blue Steel, and then comes their gently furtive rendition of Charlie Parker’s 1957 Segment.

Up next is the laid back embrace of View of Heaven and then comes their playful version of Sidney Bechet’s 1951 Promenade aux Champs-Élysées, and then we get the beautiful hipsway of Promenade in Blue, the album rounding out on the stoic, yet atmospherically-charged Picasso’s Blue Lobster, closing on the shimmering outreach within The Iberian.

Jeff Rupert, saxophone
Dan Miller, trumpet
Per Danielsson, piano
Bobby Koelble, guitar
Richard Drexler, bass
Marty Morell, percussion

Official Website