REGGIE QUINERLY at Smoke (May 31, 7, 9 and 10:30 p.m.). It’s rare enough to see a straight-ahead drummer writing a full album’s worth of original material. Rarer still to see the same drummer putting lyrics to those songs, and arriving at the sort of idiomatic hybrid — musical theater, soul, chamber music, 1970s pop, midcentury jazz — that Mr. Quinerly has achieved on his new album, “Words to Love.” He will perform selections from that album at this show, joined by the vocalists Melanie Charles and Milton Suggs, the alto saxophonist Jaleel Shaw, the pianist Sullivan Fortner and the bassist Ben Wolfe. smokejazz.com GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO, The New York Times (A version of this article appears in
At the end of the summer 2017 a tremendous natural disaster in the form of a hurricane deeply impacted my hometown of Houston, Tx. Months later, even now when I run into old friends one of my first questions remain,"So, how did your folks make out during Hurricane Harvey?" One of my good friends and frequent musical collaborators, Mr. Enoch Smith Jr. took it upon himself to use his creative gifts to benefit people in the region that still need help putting their lives back together. The resulting project, "To Houston with Love" is a soulful offering intended to inspire. I had the honor of playing drums on the entire project and also lending a composition. All the proceeds from this proje
