The Amsterdam String Trio's chamber jazz album Winter Theme was recorded at Villa-Medici Giulini Studios in Briosco, Italy in November 1999 and released in 2000 by the Munich-based record label Winter & Winter. Its 16 pieces range from protracted tonal washes to spontaneous interactive essays. Each realization blends the advanced creative sensibilities of three master improvisers. Classically trained composer and violist Maurice Horsthuis and bassist Ernst Glerum are longstanding associates of Han Bennink, Misha Mengelberg, and the Instant Composers Pool Orchestra. Composer and cellist Ernst Reijseger, who has collaborated extensively with filmmaker Werner Herzog, brings his own special magic to every project that involves him, and has recorded with the group Groove Lélé for Winter & Winter…

Locked out of the singles charts for the past seven years, Shirley Bassey finally returned with this collection of "contemporary" standards, including her British Top Five single "Something." (Bassey, who first heard the song when Peggy Lee sang it, apparently didn't even know it was a Beatles tune until just before recording it.) To parallel the modern material, Johnny Harris' arrangements add an upfront electric bass and hang-loose drumkit to the heavy strings and brass. Of course, Bassey was never a jazz singer, so she makes the transition from traditional pop to contemporary rock with an ease more comparable to Barbra Streisand than Peggy Lee. There are a few jazzy rock standards ("Light My Fire," "Spinning Wheel," "Something") plus plenty of latter-day show tunes ("Easy to Be Hard," "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life,") and a few '60s vocal pieces ("The Sea and Sand," "My Way," "Yesterday When I Was Young")…

This three-disc compilation features many of the Mills Brothers' best tracks. Although Golden Greats does not cover the vocal group's whole career, it still competes well with the definitive Mills Brothers: The Anthology (1931-1968) and perhaps represents them better.

A various artist compilation album was released by Irma Records on October 7, 2024.

Quiet Kenny is an album by the American jazz trumpeter Kenny Dorham of performances recorded in 1959 and released on the New Jazz label. The Allmusic review by Michael G. Nastos awarded the album 4½ stars and stated: "Cool and understated might be better watchwords for what the ultra-melodic Dorham achieves on this undeniably well crafted set of standards and originals that is close to containing his best work overall during a far too brief career… Never known as a boisterous or brash player, but also not a troubadour of romanticism… Dorham's music is also far from complacent, and this recording established him as a Top Five performer in jazz on his instrument. It comes recommended to all."

This Art Farmer studio session from 1971 has a slight contemporary flavor to it, due to the addition of conga player James "Mtume" Forman and percussionist Warren Smith, Jr. to a core group of collaborators including Jimmy Heath, Cedar Walton, Sam Jones, and Billy Higgins. Unfortunately, the additional percussionists are too prominent in the mix, greatly distracting from the driving arrangements of Farmer's "Homecoming" and Kenny Dorham's "Blue Bossa" as well as a peppy bossa nova, "Cascavelo." Far better are the quintet tracks, including the laid-back and mellow interpretation of Leonard Bernstein's ballad "Some Other Time," featuring the leader's matchless flügelhorn and Heath's soprano sax, and an upbeat chart of "Here's That Rainy Day." Another annoying problem is the seemingly out of tune piano, though Walton makes the best of a bad instrument. Not an essential album in the vast Farmer discography, but worth acquiring if found at a reasonable price, though it will be difficult.

Officially released for the first time ever, a previously unknown half-hour from cosmic mythologist and sound scientist Sun Ra's 1971 U.C. Berkeley course "The Black Man in the Cosmos." Ra's soft-spoken intensity is underscored by the sound of chalk on the board as he ambles effortlessly through his potent and prescient ideas. The class session closes with two musical tracks, a piano version of "Love In Outer Space" and a blistering Moog solo.A very cool document of the great Sun Ra – and a set that combines both music and a spoken passage from a class that Ra was teaching at the University of California in the 70s! The spoken work is fascinating – as it really captured Ra as he lived, but in ways that are different than you might expect – still as intellectual as any of his writings, and ideas you might have picked up from other sources – but with a very down-to-earth approach that maybe makes the man seem more human than some of his future-thinking music, or the cosmic garb that he's usually wearing on a record cover! Ra is completely captivating during the 30 minute lecture – which was part of a cours titled The Black Man & The Cosmos – then the set moves into a wonderful five minute solo piano piece, and an extra cool solo Moog performance that runs for over sixteen minutes in length – mindblowing analog electronics that has Ra getting some very noisy sounds from the Moog!

Burt Bacharach: One Amazing Night is a tribute from one of today's greatest living American popular composer - Burt Bacharach. This special evening was taped April 8th, 1998 at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City and has been aired numerous times on TNT Network Cable Artists featured: All Saints, Barenaked Ladies, Ben Folds Five, Elis Costello, Sheryl Crow, George Duke, Chrissie Hynde, Mike Meyers, David Sanborn, Luther Vandross, Dionne Warwick, Wynonna, and Burt Bacharach. Track highlights include: "Rain Drops Keep Fallin ON MY Head" by Ben Folds Five, "They Long to Close to You" by Barenaked Ladies, "Walk ON By / Say a Little Prayer / Do You Know the to San Jose" by Dionne Warwick, and more!

Jazz Is Dead announces another offering of top-shelf recordings taking listeners on a journey through the funky sounds of Ghana all the way to down to the psychedelic soul and samba of Brazil. Produced by label founders Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Jazz Is Dead Series 3 features new analog recordings from living legends Ebo Taylor, Hyldon, Dom Salvador, Antonio Carlos e Jocafi, Carlos Dafé, Joyce e Tutty Moreno as well as an unreleased LP from The Midnight Hour: Lost Tapes.

As far as drummer Brandon Sanders is concerned, everyone should have a grandmother who runs a jazz club. It was at the Casablanca, his grandmother's nightspot in Kansas City, that he was first exposed to the music of such greats as Jimmy Smith, Grant Green, and Lou Donaldson. Sanders may be long removed from those formative days, but on this CD, his sophomore recording for Savant, he pays homage to the influence and memory of his grandmother, Ernestine Parker, in the the album's first track, "Miss Ernestine."

The selections presented here are all of Bunny Berigan's Brunswick, Parlophone and Vocalion sessions as a leader as well as the Mildred Bailey and Bud Freeman-led Parolophone dates in which he played a significant role. We have also included selected ARC sides where Berigan as a sideman, offers a significant solo passage or obbligato. We have not included a number of recordings where a short Berigan solo is strictly a paraphrase on the melody, regardless of whether it be from a commercial dance band arrangement or within a jazz context. Therefore you will not find in this collection such Berigan items as Let's Try Again by Smith Ballew or Was That the Human Thing To Do?by the Boswell Sisters. Although Love Letters in the Sand(session E) falls into this category, we have decided to include it for its rarity.

Andre Previn was a celebrated German/American pianist, composer and conductor, whose long career – he died in 2019 at the age of 89 – encompassed movie music, jazz and classical music. He composed or arranged music for more than 50 films, and was music al director and conductor for many top symphony orchestra as well as composing classical art music. This collection focuses on his early career as a jazz pianist. His family, who were Jewish, left Berlin for Paris and then the USA in 1938, and when he graduated from high school in Los Angeles in 1946, started working at MGM studios. However, by then he was already playing jazz piano in Hollywood clubs and had made his first records. This 66-track 3-CD collection comprises most of his recordings from these early years as a solo pianist, with small groups and with strings, released on the Sunset, V-Disc, Monarch, RCA-Victor and Tops labels. It includes the titles from his “Andre Previn Plays George Gershwin” and “Andre Previn Plays Fats Waller” albums. He was especially noted for his recordings with his trios, and this set features trio and quartet recordings with Irving Ashby, Red Callender, Lee Young, Al Viola, Charles Parnell, Jackie Mills, Bob Bain, Ralph Collier, Lloyd Pratt, Art Shapiro, Irv Cottler, Al Hendrickson Buddy Clark and Shelly Manne. Among his remarkable musical accomplishments, he was a brilliant pianist, and even at this early stage of his career, his playing is fast, fluent and imaginative, and this collection offers a fine showcase for those talents.

Working together since 1978, the partnership of Zorn and Frith is one of the most enduring musical partnerships in the downtown scene. Their periodic duo concerts have always been special events in themselves, but when it happens in celebration of Zorn's 50th Birthday, it takes on even greater meaning. Two masters of improvisation meet head to head in the redhot crucible of Tonic for an hour of telepathic communication and exploration, and you are there.

Nils Landgren Sings Ballads Diana Krall, Jane Monheit, Dee Dee Bridgewater, and Natalie Cole - these are the stars that have caused a worldwide furore with their full-blown movement back to the "standards". It comes as no surprise that the interpretation of the well-known ballads that make up a large portion of "The Great American Songbook" has always been considered one of the highest disciplines in jazz.At first glance Nils Landgren might seem a bit out of place in the midst of this illustrious group of women.

There are certain magic moments… The musicians go on stage, count off the first number, and all at once there is that special feeling of excitement in the room that turns a concert evening into an unforgettable experience. Thanks to the intelligence of an experienced producer who had the foresight to turn the tape machine on and then just let it run, this fleeting moment of impulsive, fresh jazz and funk has been captured for our permanent pleasure.