Jazz /
2nd Session 1956 Revisited
Here is a chance to hear Miles Davis in something close to real time. Small matter that most collectors of hard bop will have these sides already and will be familiar with a particular running order. Perhaps those who have invested in the complete sessions will have a clearer sense of the continuity of these remarkable sessions, but that now familiar obsession with the burrs and snarf of the studio process may win out over musical appreciation. What happened at Van Gelder’s on October 26 1956 is…
Erotica Suite
Nice, and official reissue of the rarest LP at cult Strata East label! John Gordon’s ‘Erotica Suite’ is one of the holy grail for deep and spiritual jazz fans, check the superb ‘Neleh’! A great later label effort under the leadership of trombonist John Gordon, with work by James Spaulding on alto and flute, John Miller on piano and keyboards, Waymond Reed on trumpet, Lyle Atkinson on bass, and Frank Derrick on drums and bells
Turkish Women At The Bath
This is a wonderful rediscovery, and one of the great lost sessions of the 60s. Drummer Pete LaRoca made only three albums as a leader during his heyday in the 1960s and now this long forgotten session is available once again. Although best known for his Blue Note debut Basra in 1965, LaRoca recorded two albums for Douglas Recordings in 1967, the previously released Bliss! and this obscure date. This session is a fascinating slice of late-60s modally influenced Jazz featuring an especially welco…
The Centaur And The Phoenix
2022 Stock From his first explosion of recordings in the mid-'50s, Yusef Lateef was a player who was always gently stretching the boundaries of his music to absorb techniques, new rhythms, and new influences from Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The Centaur and the Phoenix, however, takes the risks and the innovations that Lateef was known for, and expands them in a number of different directions all at once, leading to an album that bursts with new ideas and textures, while remaining accessib…
GSU Jazz Live!
*2022 stock* This is a live album performed by a band of college students from the Governor's State University in Chicago under the direction of Warwick L. Carter. Although there were many college bands that existed at the time, this is one quite unlike any other and under the strong leadership of Carter, the group rose to tower heights in a performance very fortunate to be recorded to tape.
The almighty jazz-funk cover of "Freedom Jazz Dance" under the title of "Listen Here" bursts with a stron…
Live At Théâtre Du Chêne Noir, Avignon, France 1989
*2022 stock* On October 14th 1989, Horace Tapscott, founder of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, performed alongside his close friend and musical partner Michael Session at the Théâtre du Chêne Noir in Avignon, France. This was during a tour in which they traveled across Europe. The duo presented compositions by Leimert Park musicians Jesse Sharps, Nate Morgan and Tapscott himself.
The stark instrumentation of this concert led to minimal arrangements of compositions typically performed by much l…
The Sojourner
Japanese label P-Vine sure know how to pick out the essential spiritual jazz reissues. This is another gold standard that came originally on Strata East in 1974. Vocals feature throughout and often soar to the highest of heights and make it a charismatic album. Sample hounds and hip hop lovers might well recognise the track 'Optimystical' which has been pillaged by Detroit great Andres before now. Elsewhere there is real freeform magic on 'Music Is Nothing But A Prayer', cosmic exploration on 'T…
Stick-Up!
TIp! *Tone Poet serie. Highly recommended audiophiles new master* An album as representative as ever of the most avant-garde wing within that extraordinary laboratory called Blue Note: the reinventor of the vibraphone Bobby Hutcherson here (this is 1966) joins Joe Henderson on tenor sax, McCoy Tyner on piano, Herbie Lewis on double bass and Billy Higgins on drums to record a memorable album, including original compositions and a danceable 'Una muy bonita', a well-known Tex-Mex flavour track by O…
Masaru Imada Piano
Sublime solo piano from Masaru Imada – a Japanese player with talents in a range of different styles, but who sounds especially nice up-close here in an intimate setting! Imada's got a way of letting a tune really find its way organically – almost as if the songs here are little flowers opening up in his fingers on the keyboard of the piano – although never in a style that's "flowery" at all, because Imada's a master of finding just the right notes at the right moment – never embellishing things…
The Gift Of Love
For most though, this Detroit Soul Jazz veteran will likely be unknown, and unfortunately so because not only was Sanders a great saxophonist with his own warm and lyrical post-bop sound, he was an important fixture of historical significance in the Detroit jazz . "Prior to forming Visions, Sanders and trumpeter Marcus Belgrave fronted a band with pianist Harold McKinney called the Creative Profile. Belgrave and Sanders would continue to perform together, often with Sanders' big band, the Pionee…
Lost In Abstraction
Following her successful debut album After Dark, new ideas have led Whiting to create Lost in Abstraction. More than the expected ethereal washes of sound, the album playfully embraces her many influences into a soundscape of modernity. With rhythmical energies and the indulgent richness of an instrument so often associated with Ashby and Coltrane, the album resonates, leaving the listener lost in abstraction.
"This album explores so many elements of life. From my influences in music, to my own …
The Odysseus Suite
Those already familiar with the classic 1970 Lansdowne Recordings album Greek Variations & Other Aegean Exercises by Neil Ardley, Don Rendell and Ian Carr will immediately recognise the four compositions on this EP from the closing segment of that collection. The versions included here however, are taken from a separate session recorded around the same time and reveal that Rendell had a grander vision for them than simply to round off a collaborative album.
Not only are the tracks here nearly 20…
Daguri
The music Coltrane, Tyner and others did back in their prime made a sizable ripple in jazz. Many went on to emulate their style well after the originators either died or moved on. For the most part I find these emulator (or keepers of the flame, to be more polite) to be either alright or great. Kohsuke Mine Quintet is one of those greater ones. They're relatively obscure from what I gather, releasing only a few albums back in the 70s and a resurgence album in the 90s but their music is much more…
Green Caterpillar
* 2022 Repress. Wow! * Pianist Imada Masaru was 42 years old when he recorded this album in 1975. His adventurous spirit led him to use the electric piano for the first time in a recording, and thanks to his musicianship, he made it sound like he'd been playing the instrument for years. The program opens with the title track, a sophisticated urban funk. Guitarist Kazumi Watanabe plays a big role here. It is followed by a more intricate, fusion-like "Straight Flash." The all-original-composition …
Celebrating 75 Years Of His First Recordings
Thelonious Monk devised a new theoretical basis for his compositional aesthetic, an unorthodox, deconstructed and reinvented pianistic approach that defined his music’s unique rhythmic and melodic parameters. The piano was the vehicle of expression for his compositional mindset. - Art Lange
Live at the Jazz Workshop, Boston 1973
WBCN-FM broadcast from the Jazz Workshop, Boston, September 4th, 1973. Bass – David Williams, Congas – Ray Armando, Drums – Keith Kilgo, Guitar – Bernard Perry, Piano – Kevin Toney, Saxophone, Flute – Alan Barnes, Trumpet – Donald Byrd.
Byrd attended Cass Tech, where he studied classical music and was mentored by the band director Dr. Harry Begian, a disciplinarian. He played trumpet in military bands during a stint in the Air Force from 1951–1953, before graduating from Wayne State University i…
1960-04-09 - Scheveningen – The Netherlands
Miles Davis gave two concerts at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw in 1960 as part of a Jazz at the Philharmonic package, one on April 9 and the other on October 15. Stunning european live performance from Miles with his early quintet featuring the magic of a young and talented Trane. Miles Davis (trumpet), John Coltrane (Tenor Saxophone), Wynton Kelly (Piano), Paul Chambers (Bass), Jimmy Cobb (Drums).
At Yoshi's
When any recording made by George Coleman is issued, it's an instant event. Though Coleman has always been busy performing, writing, and especially teaching, scant few LPs or CDs have come listeners' way. It is especially thrilling to hear him live in concert performance at the initial site of the then newly minted Yoshi's in Oakland, CA, as his extended techniques and heightened sense of tonal ideas come fully to the fore. Coleman and pianist Harold Mabern, both originally from the fertile jazz…
Shukuru
'Pharoah Sanders' "Shukuru" is noteworthy as being the album that reunited Sanders with vocalist Leon Thomas, who sang on some of Sanders' most endearing and powerful compositions-- among them the legendary "The Creator Has a Masterplan".
Thomas only joins the band on two tracks-- "Mas in Brooklyn (Highlife)" and "Sun Song". The former gets a full calypso reading complete with steel drum sounds and chanted vocals traded between Sanders and Thomas. It's a lot of fun, but by and large, throwaway. …
Jazz Mood
A multi-instrumentalist who reconfigured jazz many times during his long career, Yusef Lateef came to prominence in the late 1950s, after having toured with Dizzy Gillespie. Jazz Mood dates from 1957, when his Quintet had some of Detroit's finest, including Alice Coltrane's brother Ernest Farrow on bass and future Jazz Messengers Curtis Fuller on trombone. The use of an argol on 'Metaphor' and a rabat and finger cymbals on 'Morning' point to Lateef's Islamic grounding and his belief that music s…