Bird's Up

This is the second release by educator and tenor and soprano sax player Carlos Vega. He has a smooth and limber style on the sax and in addition to being a music professor at Florida A&M, he performs with the Chicago Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble. He returned to the windy city to make this second disc with his Chicago connections: Victor Garcia (trumpet, flugelhorn); Stu Mindeman (piano, Rhodes); Josh Ramos (bass) and Xavier Breaker (drums). That group is augmented on one song by Cheryl Wilson (vocal), Scott Hesse (guitar), Steve Strand (flugelhorn) and Michael B. Nelson (trombone). The playing is tight and quite smooth and features Vega's wonderful bop playing to great advantage. There's plenty of room for Latin styling as well.