John Sneider is one of New York’s best known secrets. A veteran on both the recording and club scene, John is a musician’s musician, a consummate sideman, trumpeter, composer, and the kind of cat that those with the inside information praise highly. He’s an intelligent, melodic, hip and extremely accessible player. “Scrapper”—as he’s known to his friends—is also one of New York’s best kept secrets. Look behind the curtain on some of your favorite sides, and you may very well find that he’s on it. More often found in the studio, composing music for television, or recording on sessions with the likes of Madeleine Peyroux, Curtis Stigers, Larry Goldings, and Andy Bey, he’s not the known quantity that he could be. WithThe Scrapper, the first album released under his own name in 20 years, Sneider begins to remedy this. Here we find him among friends, doing what he loves: swinging. And that’s exactly how he comes out of the gate, with one of three originals, “The Scrapper,” on which he proudly reveals his fondness for Horace Silver and Blue Mitchell.