Old ragtime piano player music at it’s best. Featuring classics like: Hello, My Baby! • Tiger Rag • Chattanooga Choo Choo • Satin Doll • Pretty Baby • Yes Sir, That’s My Baby • Bumble Boogie • Me and My Shadow • Yes! We Have No Bananas • Charleston Rag- Varsity Rag • Alexander’s Ragtime Band, and more. All passionately played on the Steinway player piano. (Klavier)
A legend of progressive jazz, Stan Kenton led one of the most influential, innovative, and controversial jazz orchestras of the twentieth century. This album is a live recording from January 17, 1972, taken during the Stan Kenton Orchestra’s European tour. This release contains staples of the repertoire, including Rhapsody in Blue, Malaguena, Malaga, and Love Story.
Two CDs. Rollins in Holland: The 1967 Studio & Live Recordings is Resonance Records' first archival release from the Saxophone Colossus, Sonny Rollins. This deluxe set officially sanctioned by Rollins includes three different previously unissued 1967 performances with bassist Ruud Jacobs (bass) and Han Bennink (drums). With extensive booklet of unseen photos and essays by Aidan Levy and Frank Jochemsen, plus interviews with Sonny Rollins and Han Bennink, a remembrance of Ruud Jacobs, and more.
This live recording of Quincy Jones and his Orchestra was taken in Ludwigshafen in 1961. The orchestra had an all-star roster, including Freddie Hubbard, Benny Bailey, and Sahib Shihab. The program includes classics such as Summertime and Stolen Moments.
Gulda's “Symphony in G“, presented on this album, was discovered in the SWR archive in the course of research for the release of all the recordings the Austrian pianist made for the German Southwest Broadcasting Corporation (SWR). Until now nobody actually knew that this work existed for there are no indications of Gulda being commissioned or of a specific occasion for which he might have composed this symphony. Therefore, one listens here to the world première of a piece which – apart from being recorded in the studio on 20 November 1970 – has never been performed in public. At the beginning of the 1970s Gulda gave concerts that exclusively featured his own compositions. This also applies to his performance at the Heidelberger Jazztage in 1971, released here for the first time digitally and on album. Almost all of Gulda's jazz works, though often based on classical forms, cannot be played without knowledge of improvisation so as to “keep them away from bunglers” (as the pianist himself put it). One of Gulda’s few compositions without improvisation to be heard here is No. IV from the ten-part piano cycle “Play Piano Play”. “Prelude and Fugue" was probably Gulda’s favourite work and was the last piece of Gulda’s performance in Heidelberg. An exception on this album is Fritz Pauer's "Etude.” In 1966 Fritz Pauer won a prize in the jazz competition Gulda had initiated and so Gulda decided to include this work in the Heidelberg concert from 1971.
Founded in 1969, the 18-member United States Navy Band, Commodores, have been performing big band jazz for the Navy and the nation for over 40 years. They're held in high regard nationwide by concert patrons and critics alike, and have compiled an impressive roster of jazz artists who've guested with them (James Moody, Branford Marsalis, Chris Potter, and many more). This album includes an array of great jazz tunes, including “Caravan”, “Waltz For Debby” and “Lester Left Town”
The first album of Natalie Dessay for Sony Classical is a journey through music (Great American Song Book, Broadway & Jazz) and art (Edward Hopper) - This is not a classical album. "I was delighted to once again work with Claire Gibault, who now leads her own chamber orchestra, the Paris Mozart Orchestra, more than twenty years after she first accompanied my Mozart performance at the start of my career as a classical singer. It all started with a couple of Edward Hopper paintings that inspired the beautiful stories of poet Claude Esteban, which Graciane Finzi in turn illustrated with her delicate and inventive music. Claire asked me to tell the story of these "melologues". For my part, I selected ten other paintings that inspired me to choose a range of songs from what's known as the "Great American Songbook".
I asked five incredible musicians to arrange them for the Paris Mozart Orchestra, thereby building a bridge between classical music, jazz, and musicals. I then worked to develop a new voice—a deeper and more intimate sound that would whisper into the listener's ear. It was a voice I had to learn to control, like a small, secretive wild animal. I wanted to open things up with "On A Clear Day", which serves as an introduction, and a promise. Next comes a self-deprecating and low-pitched version of "I Feel Pretty" in quintuple time that leads naturally into "I Am A Fool To Want You", a song about someone who is ready to do anything and everything to win over a lost love. "Send In The Clowns" marks the disenchantment of people whose paths cross, but never at the right time. Hope lies just beyond the next bend in the road with "Detour Ahead" followed by "Something's Coming…Maybe Tonight". Next is "Autour de minuit" based on the beautiful poem by Claude Nougaro, which rings with the promise of a brighter tomorrow and of luck that might finally go our way. But the memory of our beloved refuses to fade, and every night we find ourselves back at the counter of a café that echoes with happy memories with "I Keep Going Back To Joe's", except that now it's just us at the bar as we listen to "In My Solitude". It's times like these that make us want to settle down with "A Place You Want To Call Home", but in the end, as "The Two Lonely People" asks, won't we always wind up alone even when we think we have a special someone? What do we have left, then, if not show business? As "There's No Business Like Show Business" tells us, isn't the world just a stage filled? Enjoy your journey through music and paintings with these "Pictures of America"."
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REVIEW:
Dessay sounds in great form and uses every trick in the book. She takes aspects of a Streisand-inspired technique. Taking the cover off the voice mid-note and opening the tone right out to its full; or whittling it down to a sexy, Julie London whisper.
Chet Baker does what he does best; SINGS AND PLAYS. He was gracious enough to occasionally put down the trumpet to croon, his vocal ability as skillful as his trumpeting. Baker's effortless virtuosity transcended the bounds of jazz stardom, with both aficionados and mainstream audiences embracing him as the genre's coolest cat.
Dick Hyman's approach to solo piano is both rich in tradition and deeply personal, an odyssey into the wellsprings of American music. Ranging through a repertoire of well-known standards and sometimes obscure delights, Hyman brings a wealth of piano techniques, infectious swing, and a knack for sometimes extravagant variations, including a version of "Just You, Just Me" that ranges from classic stride playing to interpolated soul jazz. Among the little-heard pieces are "Odeon," a 1905 composition by Brazilian Ernesto Nazareth that adds a Latin touch to a ragtime foundation, and James P. Johnson's exuberant "Carolina Shout." Hyman's version of the traditional ballad "Shenandoah" is especially inspired, a lovely rolling improvisation that presses its consonant harmonies toward the resonating world of minimalism. Recorded on a nine-foot Boesendorfer concert grand, this recital is both an audiophile's and piano lover's delight. --Stuart Broomer
Arguably Mingus's greatest recording! Featuring John Handy, Booker Ervin, Jimmy Knepper, Horace Parlan, Dannie Richmond and many others, tracks include "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," "Better Git It in Your Soul," "Fables of Faubus," "Jelly Roll" and other classics. This 20-bit digitally remastered edition boasts 3 bonus tracks, 6 tracks in unedited form for the 1st time, brilliant new liners, and great, rare session shots!
Rediscover the 1959 classic through this 20-bit remastered version with a bonus track: an alternate take of Flamenco Sketches. Recorded at Columbia 30th Street Studio, New York City on March 2, 1959 (tracks 1–3) and April 22, 1959 (tracks 4–6). Remixed from the original three-track tapes at Sony Music Studios, using a Presto all-tube, three-track recorder.
To coincide with the centennial celebration of the great Duke Ellington, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra (under the direction of Wynton Marsalis) returns with a new album of all Ellington compositions, featuring performances by Cyrus Chestnut, Dianne Reeves and Illinois Jacquet. This "live" album was recorded as a companion to a PBS documentary on Ellington (to air May '99), and kicks off the Orchestra's world tour and the release of Jump for Joy, a literary homage to Duke Ellington.
