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2 ACUMEN • SPRING 2021 the lyrics,” Warfield says. “For me, it’s an exploration going back and listening to all these tunes I grew up with and this time listening to the lyrics.” Their new album features many of the musicians from the first album, but added to the mix are Jane Stuart on vocals, Cecilia Coleman on piano and Matt Chertkoff on guitar. On this recording, the band is also joined by Warfield’s longtime friend “Blue Lou” Marini on woodwinds and the one and only Paul Shaffer on Hammond B3 and electric piano. Rounding out the sessions were renowned jazz vocalists Carolyn Leonhart and Julie Michels. “We all groove on each other with this band. We listen to what we’ve played and we’re mesmerized by the level of talent and musicianship,” Warfield says. “We’re gassed by what each other can do. It’s a great band. I get to play with all these young musicians, and we’re doing this amazing stuff.” Warfield is already working on a new album. The band tracks, taken from his 2020 performance at Zoellner Arts Center, are nearly finished and will play on his wide-ranging musical interests. “I think my real strength comes from being an arranger,” he adds. “I think I do the best with other people’s material. I want to do all of it. I like so many things. I was a studio arranger before my teaching career. I’ve worked with Ornette (Coleman). I’ve worked with Paul Anka. I’ve worked with The Spinners, Mel Lewis and the Jazz Orchestra. I’ve done a commissioned piece for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The problem is I love doing all of it.” MUSIC SMILE Veteran trumpeter Bill Warfield has released another album with his Hell’s Kitchen Funk Orchestra. Smile is the second release from a band that combines classic R&B grooves with swinging jazz sentiments. Warfield, professor of music, is known professionally for intertwining jazz and commercial music that draws on his love for rock bands like Blood, Sweat & Tears and soul performers like James Brown. Smile follows in the same attitude as the orchestra’s 2015 debut, Mercy, Mercy, Mercy . “We had so much fun making this album, and I think it sounds it,” Warfield says. “For me, that’s what it’s all about. This was two hard years in the making, three recording sessions and two bands, but I got to do this with folks who really know how to groove and I love performing with.” Smile is a collection of wide-ranging cover tracks including Weather Report’s Cucumber Slumber , Booker T. & the M.G.’s funk classic Hip Hug-Her and Bobbie Gentry’s best-known Ode to Billie Joe . The album also has a capacious arrangement of Theme from Law & Order , the wistful Paul Williams-Kenny Ascher waltz Rainbow Connection , even a jazz version of the Eurythmics’ This City Never Sleeps . The name of the album comes from a song written by silent movie star Charlie Chaplin, and listeners can hear two versions—one with vocals and one instrumental. “When I was growing up, I listened to the music in songs. I never listened to PHILOSOPHY REPUBLIC Expanding a deeper understanding of Plato’s Republic has been a career-long passion for Roslyn Weiss. Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, her latest book project examines two of the books in this classic work. Republic is Plato’s most famous and widely read dialogue. Over 10 books, the dialogue explores two central questions—what is justice? and what is the best political institution and what is the place of the philosopher in it? In Book Four of Plato’s Republic , his main character, Socrates, presents a novel definition of justice, one widely regarded by scholars as the official Platonic teaching on the nature of justice. Justice, Socrates asserts, is the harmonious cooperation of the parts of the city with one another, and of the parts of the soul with one another, with each part doing “its own” and not usurping the role of the other parts. In particular, he says, in a just city and soul, the parts best suited to ruling and the parts best suited to being ruled scrupulously avoid switching places. Weiss, Clara H. Stewardson professor of philosophy, counters that the definition in Book Four does not reveal the true meaning of justice, but rather the proper understanding of justice emerges in the series of conversations in Book One between Socrates and three successive speakers: Cephalus, Polemarchus and Thrasymachus. The definition of justice that Socrates proposes in Book Four is entirely new, one that he never proposed As part of her book project, Roslyn Weiss explores two books in Plato’s Republic . Bill Warfield THE HUMANITIES BRIEFS