Telarc's seventh SACD multi - genre sampler is a great tool for reaching out to the consumer and providing a selection of jazz, pop, crossover and world music in surround. Continuing in the Telarc and Heads Up tradition, this sampler is hybrid - playable on standard CD players as well as SACD players. This sampler features music from several of the more popular Telarc and Heads Up SACD releases of the past several years. The sampler kicks off with the big band sound, in a really big way, as Randy Brecker is joined by his late brother Michael on the "Some Skunk Funk." Other offerings include soul legend Ray Charles singing the classic "Oh What a Beautiful Morning," and hot new bassist Esperanza Spalding with Fourplay on "Prelude for Lovers," and much more.

This release picks up where the previous volumes have left off & one cannot really fault the playing in any way.
Listening to this disc is almost pure pleasure for tempo choices, balances between piano, orchestra & the respective sections are as close to ideal as one could wish to hear on modern instruments. The phrasing is also pleasingly refined & not in the least Romantic but of course contains much beauty & ardour in the famous slow movement to the 21st concerto. The only grumble is the cadenza that Zacharias composed for the 1st movement of the 21st concerto – it tries to be a little too clever & doesn’t quite work for this listener; a shame, for those in the 3rd movement are exquisite.

Night two of the legendary three-show stand at Nassau Coliseum 1980 is a barnstormer. It features the tour premiere of “Night” as the opener and, in its lone River tour performance, an extraordinary “Incident On 57th Street” into “Rosalita” to close the set. Spanning 35 songs, Nassau 12/29 beautifully blends deep River cuts (“Stolen Car,” “Wreck on the Highway,” “Point Blank”), seasonal nuggets (“Merry Christmas Baby” and “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” and fan favorites (“Fire,” “Because the Night”), making it one of the finest shows of the tour.

This is a unique experiment in the Hancock discography, recorded in Tokyo in just one day during a tour of Japan Dedication songs. It contains two introspective, complex solo acoustic piano tracks, 'Maiden Voyage' and 'Dolphin Dance,' which are notable since they date from a period when Hancock was supposedly totally immersed in electronics.

V.S.O.P. is an April 1977 jazz-funk fusion live album by keyboard player Herbie Hancock featuring performances by the V.S.O.P. Quintet (Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams), the Mwandishi band with Eddie Henderson on two tracks, and The Headhunters featuring Bennie Maupin and Paul Jackson. In the spring of 1976, Herbie Hancock’s manager David Rubinson approached impresario and producer of the Newport Jazz Festival, George Wein, with the idea of staging a retrospective of Hancock’s work. Wein endorsed the idea, so Hancock made a phone call to Miles Davis to ask whether he would do a one-time reunion of the classic quintet with Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams. When Davis declined, Hancock invited his long-time Blue Note collaborator Freddie Hubbard to join the ensemble.

In 2005, before the release of his first album, Ibrahim began a work that seemed obvious. With his first album, Ibrahim had made an artistic proposal, but was far from having finished all he had to say. And this second album was the logical continuation of the first one. An evolution in the form of a question. "Do I have to evolve necessarily in a clear artistic direction: Oriental, or Occidental? Am I obliged by my origins to take refuge in the ease of the exotic? Ibrahim asks this question through an amazing process. One "DISORIENTAL" and the other "PARADOXIDENTAL", and both treat the same question from two distinct angles. The first is the look of the oriental on the interbreeding with the west. The other is the Western's view of miscegenation with the East. This album is according to Ibrahim a research work. Far from being an outcome, it is part of an artistic and intimate therapeutic approach.

Paris-based trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf's moody mix of jazz, groove and Lebanese traditional music comes across rather like a cut-up novel by William Burroughs or a collection of short stories by Paul Bowles, or at least a shot in that direction. Partly it's the source material, in which Maalouf's east Mediterranean musical heritage replaces those authors' fascination with Morocco; partly it's the structure of the album, in which a series of relatively brief, cross-referential tracks, most lasting between two and less than five minutes, are assembled in an episodic collage. Though carefully put together over three years, the music has an attractively rough-edged feel: hot, sun baked and m'hashish, as Moroccans would say (and as the title of the fourth track confirms).

Much like his uncle, the celebrated author Amin Maalouf who brought Levantine raconteur to the western novel trumpeter/composer Ibrahim Maalouf infuses his jazz with Middle Eastern musicality. On Diagnostic the last installment of a trilogy Maalouf actually draws from many different sources to create a unique sound that remains definitely in the jazz tradition.

After repeated praises received by his debut album, Vintage Christmas, and follow-up EP, Vintage Christmas Wonderland, pianist and arranger David Ian explores a familiar world of jazz classics with the vintage feel that defines the sound of his recordings. His third studio album, Valentine’s Day in time for the occasion. Ian’s feel remains intimate with a small jazz combo led by his delicate piano arrangements, which ASSOCIATED PRESS states is “seamlessly melding the some traditional compositions with the perfect hint of lounge-meets-jazz phrasing.” The selections on this album reflect David Ian’s own journey in discovering jazz, with many of the tracks among the first standards he came to love.

On Anne's second release on the JazzMedia label she is joined by Alphonso Johnson and Ndugu Chancler, two of the industry's most in-demand sidemen. Tenor saxophonist Doug Webb and guitarist Steve Trovato also join in this exploration of late '60's to early '70's hits reimagined in a jazz setting. 'We've all heard and the done the standard jazz repertoire, and as much as I love those tunes, I think it's time to expand our idea of what jazz is,' she says. 'From the beginning, jazz musicians have culled material from the world of popular music - reshaping, reharmonizing and, of course, making it swing.'

Throughout the '70s Keith Jarrett maintained two contrasting ensembles, one American based, the other Scandinavian. This is an album by the latter quartet, which had previously recorded the warm and winning BELONGING in 1974. 1978's „My Song“ is aptly titled, as the six Jarrett compositions do indeed have the individual characteristics and bearing of songs. Infused with elements of folk and gospel, the music has a friendly resonance that aligns it with the likes of Horace Silver. While not as overtly soulful as Silver, the quartet's interpretations celebrate the power of melody and harmony. Garbarek's crystalline tone in particular flies through the rhythmic architecture like a bird over a winter landscape.

The musical language adopted for these arrangements never strays too far from their original sonorities, but on the other had it is not a simple transcription, but an interpretation of a repertoire that is more relevant than ever, and consequently a source of inspiration and raw material for contemporary composers.

This second release on New Focus from the musicians from soundSCAPE highlights the cultivated programming of this Italian summer festival focusing on contemporary music. Two of the three works, by Jesse Jones and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, are narrative and text driven, while the third, by Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez is inspired by visual art and the creation of musical systems. Throughout, the musicians from soundSCAPE perform with virtuosity and commitment, highlighting the richness of these scores, absent as they are of bombast and traces of stylistic agendas.

This is the fourth volume of music written by virtuoso Pamela Decker. She is the definitive performer of her own works. Included is The Freese Collection, performed by the dedicatee, Faythe Freese. The entire program is recorded on the landmark Flentrop organ at Saint Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle.

Dai Fujikura’s latest release on his Minabel label covers a wide range of instrumentation, from solo works for soprano, clarinet, violin and double bass to a Tuba concerto, an ensemble piece for horn and string quartet and three chorus works one of which is with a marimba. Performers who appear on this album also vary widely: Sara Kobayashi, Nobuaki Fukukawa, Yoji Sato, Noriko Tsukagoshi, Quartet Amabile, The Philharmonic Chorus of Tokyo, Makoto Yoshida, Øystein Baadsvik, Geigeki Wind Orchestra Academy, TOKYO KOSEI WIND ORCHESTRA, with two conductors Shizuo Z Kuwahara and Kazuki Yamada. All tracks are edited, mixed and mastered by the composer himself.