In the liner notes to his brand new album Standards, the astonishing jazz guitarist Yotam Silberstein expresses a wish to “bear witness to the better angels of human endeavor” via music. And these six selections — associated with heavyweights from Miles Davis to Rodger and Hammerstein, Victor Young, and many more — might just prove their existence.

On Standards, which releases on February 23rd, 2024 via Jojo Records, Silberstein is joined by a straight-ahead legend in tenor saxophonist George Coleman, bassist’s bassist John Patitucci, and Billy Hart, a living legend of the jazz drumming lineage. Throughout, the guitarist channels the bebop and blues that forged him, into some of the most treasured songs in the Western musical canon.

As Silberstein explains, most of his albums — like 2019’s Future Memories, 2016’s The Village, and 2009’s Next Page — have consisted of original music. However, those steeped in his craft know of his tremendous respect for the tradition of Black American music. Which extends to his collegial relationship with the true heavies on the scene.

“A lot of my work here in New York in the last 20 years has been with some of the jazz masters,” Silberstein explains. “So, I wanted to, first of all, play standards because I had never had a chance to record an album of standards. And also, to do it with the real guys, you know? The heroes.”

1. Serenata
2. Beija Flor
3. Lo-Joe (ft. George Coleman)
4. If I Loved You
5. Eclypso
6. Never Let Me Go (ft. George Coleman)
7. Little Willie Leaps
8. Stella By Starlight

This most wondrous new recording opens on the lavishly opulent Serenata, which was itself composed in 1947 by Leroy Anderson, with its most famous rendition still being the one put to lyrics by Mitchell Parish and sung by Nat King Cole) and then we get the Brazilian-hued Beija Flor (composed by Nelson Cavaquinho), the beautiful Lo-Joe and the simply divine If I Loved You; which obviously hails from the songbook of Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rogers, and was created for the Broadway musical Carousel.

Along next is the magnificently tonal, swinging calypso found within the driving heartbeat of Eclypso and that is in turn backed by the elegantly luxurious Never Let Me Go, the album rounding out on the succulently moody ebb and flow of Little Willie Leaps (itself a contrafact of “All God’s Chillun Got Rhythm,” that Miles Davis once recorded with Charlie Parker), closing on the decadent bebop of Stella by Starlight.

www.yotammusic.com