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Gerry Eastman Quintet: Brown Skin Gal

The underrated journeyman guitarist-composer Gerry Eastman has been holding forth for more than 20 years at the Williamsburg Music Center, a low-profile school and performance space in Brooklyn. He is joined here by former students including saxophonist Joe Ford and colleagues like drummer Newman Baker, electric bassist Stanley Banks and tenor saxophonist Roland Alexander. Eastman’s pungent lines are knotty and angular on “Just Like the First Time” and “Brown Skin Gal,” but he plays with soulful lyricism on harmonically rich numbers like his gorgeous “Another Rendezvous” and Ford’s “CB.”

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