Jazz /
Jazz Composers Workshop
Charlie Mingus’s 1956 Jazz Composers Workshop showcases his visionary blend of hard bop, classical, gospel, and avant-garde. The album captures Mingus’s restless innovation—by turns explosive, tender, and genre-defying.
Montreux II – Recorded Live At The Montreux Festival, 1970
Recorded at the 1970 Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland and produced by Helen Keane, Montreux II (originally issued on the CTI label) was the second of Bill Evans’ Montreux concert recordings to be released, following the Grammy Award-winning Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival (1968). It features the leader accompanied by Eddie Gomez on bass, and Marty Morell on drums. According to AllMusic writer Ken Dryden, the concert finds “the pianist in peak form” presenting “a terrific live perfo…
Further Conversations With Myself
Further Conversations with Myself, released on the Verve label in 1967, was Bill Evans’ sequel to his 1963 Grammy Award LP Conversations with Myself. As on that initial album, here all the pieces are unaccompanied solos with piano overdubs. On Further, however, he plays just two pianos instead of the three he had previously employed. According to AllMusic reviewer Scott Yanow, “The program is brief, but Evans plays quite well throughout. In particular, his versions of Johnny Mandel's ‘Emily’ an…
...How Time Passes...
A fascinating blend of jazz and contemporary classical influences, How Time Passes is the debut album from the envelope pushing trumpeter and composer Don Ellis.
Known for his extensive musical experimentation, particularly in the area of time signatures, Ellis began his long career in the New York Citys post bop and avant-garde jazz scenes of late 1950s. Most notably he appeared on Charles Mingus Mingus Dynasty, and albums by George Russell and Maynard Feguson. But he also worked with, among ot…
Blues For Smoke
Jaki Byard was a visionary multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, teacher, and pianist. His early experiences with classical music fused seamlessly with a deep passion for jazz, shaping his unique style. While he mastered numerous instruments including trumpet, trombone, saxophone, and drums the piano became his main voice. By the early 1960s, he had established himself as a dynamic and forward-thinking player, joining Charles Mingus's ensemble and contributing to seminal works like Mingus, …
The Endangered Species
In 1980 Bobby Wellins was commissioned to write a suite of music, which he called ‘The Endangered Species’ because, in his words: “Some years ago there was an oil spillage which washed ashore in Bognar Regis where I live. The guillemots were being pulled out in a dreadful state. One reads about such things, but to see for oneself a bird's life being taken away from it is quite horrific. Their lives are short enough anyway. It brought home to me very directly the damage we are inflicting on ourse…
Blue Train
"We’re listening to Blue Train, which to me is one of the most beautiful pieces on one of the most beautiful records that Coltrane recorded in the fifties. It’s his first real mature statement and he wrote all but one of the tunes on this album which was very rare in the fifties and each one is a gem, particularly the title tune Blue Train. And while it’s kind of easy to play the blues, this has a suspended and haunting kind of quality to it." - Michael Cuscuna
Coltrane
*2025 stock* Coltrane is a studio album by the jazz saxophonist, bandleader, and composer John Coltrane. It was released in July 1962 through Impulse! Records. The recording was made in April and June 1962 at the Van Gelder Studio. At the time of release it was overlooked by the music press, but has since come to be regarded as a significant recording in Coltrane's discography.
The Magic Of Ju-Ju
A furious 18-minute raid occupies the first side of this 1967 album, where Archie Shepp (tenor sax) is surrounded by Reginald Workman on double bass and five percussionists: Beaver Harris, Norman Connor, Eddie Blackwell, Frank Charles and Dennis Charles. Even if Shepp never loses the initial energy, the rest of the music on The Magic of Ju-Ju has slightly less frenetic atmospheres; it is a departure from the first track, gradually sitting in a more traditional realm, with the addition of Martin …
Soul At The Hands Of The Machine
2002 release ** "Drummer Guillermo E. Brown burst onto the progressive jazz circuit via his performances and recordings with forward-thinking saxophonists David S. Ware and Rob Reddy amid various projects and sessions. His first solo release finds the artist carrying the torch for Thirsty Ear's somewhat futuristic "Blue Series." Brown, with assistance from multi-reedmen Daniel Carter and Andre Vidal, among others, delivers a decisively high-tech outing, awash with funk, trip-hop, and more. The d…
Out Of The Cool
2025 stock Originally released in 2019. "A classic big-band album and one of the first-ever releases on the Impulse! Label, this 1961 recording features a superb line-up including Jimmy Knepper on trombone, Ron Carter, on bass and a fiery Elvin Jones on drums."
Adrift
Søren Skov Orbit's debut album, "Adrift," is at once subtle and profound. The Danish saxophonist and his collaborators have created something quite special and consistently deep. This record may not easily be classifiable, but the most interesting music creeps between the lines. Tenor and soprano saxophonist Søren Skov (Debre Damo Dining Orchestra) and keyboardist Peder Vind co-founded the trippy quintet Søren Skov Orbit in 2016 to explore “more jazzy ideas,” as the saxophonist puts it. Joined b…
Thelonious Monk With Sonny Rollins 1953 To 1957 (Revisited)
Though they may not have recorded together until 1953, when Rollins was 23 years old, Sonny was introduced to Monk while a senior in high school, already part of a cadre of young neighborhood jazz neophytes. Monk became a mentor to them, offering home-based instruction on the new possibilities restructuring bop harmonies and rhythms, or as Rollins later put it, “the geometry of musical time and space.” - Art Lange
Why I Like Coffee
Composer and pianist Bob Nell is best known for his work with Kelly Roberty and Brad Edwards, collectively known as The N/R/E Trio, with whom he performs regularly throughout the Midwest and Canada, backing such jazz luminaries as Eddie Harris, Ray Brown, Woody Shaw, Freddie Hubbard, David "Fathead" Newman, Bobby Hutcherson, Nat Adderley, Emily Remler, Michele Hendricks, Sonny Fortune, Hank Crawford, and many others.
I first heard about Bob Nell shortly after moving to Seattle; he spent some tim…
Loxodonta Africana
From 1977, seven tunes, five of them by Ricky Ford, the then 23-year-old tenor saxophonist and member of the Charles Mingus band and leader of the session. Accompanied by bassist extraordinaire Richard Davis and the great Dannie Richmond, Ford leads the band through mostly hard-swinging, straight-ahead compositions steeped in the jazz tradition but speaking a contemporary language -- a result of the distinctly audible influence of Mingus. Great compositions and strong improvising from the solois…
Extensions
"Languishing off-catalogue for many years, McCoy Tyner's Extensions may be the pianist's most unjustly neglected album. Strange days, for not only is the music ineffably vibrant, but Extensions is the only recording ever to feature Tyner alongside pianist and harpist Alice Coltrane, who replaced him in saxophonist John Coltrane's group in 1966. The album has one foot in the echoes of John Coltrane's "classic quartet," of which Tyner was a member from 1960-65, and the other in the astral jazz sty…
Night Dreamer
“Night Dreamer is an album that finds Wayne Shorter in a state of transition as he was still rooted in the hard bop style that started his career, but also starting to lean toward the more abstract style that will serve for the greater part of his remaining career. It’s a talented, and somewhat unusual ensemble that Shorter has assembled here. McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones, at that time, were mostly known for their famous work with Coltrane, but in 1964, when this album was recorded, Tyner and Jon…
Schizophrenia
"Wayne Shorter’s Schizophrenia found the legendary saxophonist at the pinnacle of post-bop with a sextet of like-minded musical explorers including James Spaulding, Curtis Fuller, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter & Joe Chambers performing Shorter originals like ‘Tom Thumb’, ‘Go’, and ‘Miyako’. Recorded on March 10, 1967, at Van Gelder Studios, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey." - HHV
Poly-Currents (Blue Note Tone Poet Series)
After his six years with the seminal John Coltrane Quartet, the master drummer Elvin Jones signed with Blue Note in 1968 and began building his own career as a bandleader. His first two albums for the label were spare trio outings—Puttin’ It Together and The Ultimate—both featuring saxophonist Joe Farrell and bassist Jimmy Garrison. For his next album—1969’s unfettered post-bop exploration Poly-Currents—Jones expanded his ensemble with additional woodwinds and percussion while still maintaining …
Music Written For Monterey 1965, Not Heard, Played In Its Entirety At UCLA
** Rare original copies. Second pressing on Jazz Workshop from the mid '70s (estimated) of this impossible to obtain album, the original issue being available only as a mail-order release. Unplayed copies from a dead-stock, possible wear due to ageing on covers ** On September 25, 1965, at UCLA’s Royce Hall, Charles Mingus took the stage with an octet of some of the most forward-thinking jazz musicians of the era. The occasion was not just any concert, but a determined response to an earlier set…