In a deeply impressive and magnificent synthesis of gospel, jazz and contemporary music, Uri Caine tells the moving story of Octavius Catto, born in 1839 in South Carolina to free African-American parents. Catto's family moved to Philadelphia in 1844, where he studied, became an educator, humanities scholar, top cricket and baseball player, and civil rights activist. Together with his fellow campaigners, he achieved the abolition of slavery and discrimination in elections based on race, color, or former serfdom, as well as the creation of educational institutions for African-Americans. Catto was murdered by Frank Kelly during riots on election day in 1871. Octavius Catto: "We shall never rest at ease, but will agitate and work, by our means and by our influence, in court and out of court, asking aid of the press, calling upon Christians to vindicate their Christianity, and the members of the law to assert the principles of the profession by granting us justice and right, until these invidious and unjust usages shall have ceased."

Internationally renowned composer and guitarist Kaki King co-produced her tenth album, Modern Yesterdays, with sound designer Chloe Alexandra Thompson and recording engineer Arjan Miranda. It's her first full-length studio project since the 2015 release of The Neck Is A Bridge to the Body ("bursting with masterclass talent," as reviewed in PopMatters), and her first to be recorded almost entirely on acoustic guitar. Rich in post-classical, jazz and blues-flavored motifs, as well as electronic and electro-acoustic influences, Modern Yesterdays mines a poignant, meditative arc that not only fits the mood of these turbulent times, but also once again establishes King as a tirelessly inventive composer whose imagination extends well beyond the sonic limits of her chosen instrument.

Multiquarium Big band feat. Biréli Lagrène: "Remembering Jaco" is a tribute to Jaco Pastorius's music, made by André Charlier (drums) and Benoit Sourisse (piano) from the Multiquarium Big band, one of the best French Big Bands. Jaco Pastorius is a big star in the Jazz-Rock scene (and beyond), an icon for the bass players all around the world, the one who brought to electric bass the possibility of becoming in some case a soloist instrument in a band. Jaco Pastorius made very famous solo albums and wrote amazing big band music. He played with Pat Metheny, Joni Mitchell but was also a very important member of the famous Jazz-rock band, Weather Report with Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, Peter Erskine (who participates to this album with some spoken words!)... The virtuoso gypsy guitar player, Biréli Lagrène, has been invited to play electric fretless bass on the album. Biréli, who, as a young genius of the guitar, began to play in Montreux when he was 14, he is now 50 and played one year and a half with Jaco Pastorius on stage when he was 19 years old. Biréli is an amazing bass player, he perfectly integrated how Jaco's Music was working and pushed it beyond it's borders.

Eva Kruse´s preceding albums In Water and On the Mo have both received loads of praise and recognition. In 2015 and 2017 she was honored with Jazz-Echo awards (the German equivalent of a Grammy) for best national bass player. M. Heinzelmann described in NDR´s Jazz-Album of the week that: "The Oboe is very rarely heard in jazz: It's pure sound opens up the sonic landscape and together with the saxophone it takes the listener on a journey into unknown territories". This spirit of breaking new ground characterizes the whole of the album On the Mo. Eva Kruse plays to her strengths, the poetry, the grooves and the freedom, and together with her band they explore across boundaries.

This new recording is about polyphonic references between the great counterpoint artists Byrd; Gibbons; Bach and the contemporary composers John Tavener; Oliver Knussen; John Adams; Markus Horn and Xiaoyong Chen. The two Bach Ricercari from the Musical Offering form the bracket. The exciting connection of the individual; different works to each other is created by the polyphonic structures; the modal church keys or by religious; spiritual references. 429 years lie between the work of Byrd and the work of Xiaoyong Chen composed for the LP. With Bach; Byrd; Gibbons and Contemporary Music; the listener can expect a recording that is wonderfully audible; in a positive sense unexhausting. You have to get involved with the depth; the space and sometimes the silence; but it is worth it; because the music changes your own self and focuses attention on you. "I'm interested in the connections between different epochs and their polyphonic structures. So obviously there was no way that I could ignore Johann Sebastian Bach. However; I considered what to combine with his Ricercares a 3 and a 6 from The Musical Offering. First I thought of William Byrd; as I knew that polyphony and contrapuntal style were important to him; despite the fact that he was almost 150 years older than Bach. I began with vocal polyphony and arrived at Orlando Gibbons and virginal music; which I wanted to combine with contemporary music. And then the search began..." (Alexandra Sostmann)

When Anna Lundqvist (voc) and Jonas André (piano) met over 20 years ago, they soon realized they had a special kind of musical connection - a communication of a near telepathic nature. Now the duo reunites to rekindle that old spark again, and to release their debut album, Reunion, into the world. The music flows seamlessly between European jazz and pop, where original material intertwines with songs by, for instance, Joni Mitchell, Kenny Wheeler, Norma Winstone, Alexander Lövmark, Anders von Hofsten, and Jay-Jay Johansson. Melancholic harmony and drama are the key elements that make up the profound and honest repertoire with lyrics about life, passion, and will. It was 20 years ago, when they both studied at Skurup's Folk High School, that they played together for the first time. And despite coming from different musical backgrounds, they quickly realized they had a special kind of musical chemistry. However, life and further studies made them decide to pause the duo indefinitely. But the will to play together never went away, and now the duo has been revived to develop that chemistry and to make new music.

Besides his reputation as "the definitive swing pianist", Teddy Wilson is often remembered in terms of his collaborations. Having played on the records of names like Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald and Benny Goodman, Wilson's fingerprints are found on many of records that helped popularize and define swing in it's glory years. In 1980, Wilson revisited the songs he had performed with Benny Goodman in the 1930s, delivering material that he had clearly mastered at this point and which gave a special look into the talents and sentiments of Teddy Wilson that played a primary role in the swing era. Teddy Wilson Trio Revisits the Goodman Years sees Teddy Wilson re-portray the Benny Goodman small-group repertoire that Wilson had played with Goodman many decades before this Copenhagen session in 1980. It is a return to material that had stood the test of time while Wilson had lived a long career since his time with Goodman himself. Of the many collaborators that Wilson enjoyed in his career, Goodman in particular developed a strong, long-lived musical relationship with Teddy Wilson, incorporating the aspects and strengths of Wilson's playing that are particularly apparent on this record. Relaxed and elegant, Wilsons mastery of the piano sounds as graceful as ever while maintaining a sense of intensity that comes through with renewed clarity in the present line-up. Wilson has not reinvented himself in returning to these songs, but his talent and infectious and exciting playing make it hard to argue that he should.

Summer Serenade, recorded in 1980, sees Benny Carter in the latter part of a pioneering and exceptionally long career return to Copenhagen for a session that documents his accumulated relationship with the alto saxophone and why he is remembered as one of the instrument's defining players. On a Sunday in August of 1980, Carter found a comfortable dynamic in a quartet finely tuned to his still obvious talents on the alto sax and who also managed to make their own mark on a series of Carter's own songs as well as those of a few others. Although he played trumpet, trombone, clarinet, tenor and piano at different points in his career, it is as an alto saxophonist that Benny Carter achieved his enviable reputation as an instrumentalist. The broad, sweeping phrases of his improvisations have the structural stability of compositions in their own right, and here, his approach to the instrument benefits from having been honed throughout the prior decades. Benny Carter had previously toured in Scandinavia in the 1930s when he had made a name for himself in the United States writing for and playing with the bands of Charlie Johnson, Horace and Fletcher, Don Redman and others. On this first encounter with European audiences, Carter was welcomed with open arms, and perhaps this initial meeting played into him going back to Copenhagen to record Summer Serenade almost 44 years later.

Recorded at the end of a string of engagements throughout the Scandinavian countries, Archie Shepp + The New York Contemporary Five, Vol. 2 captures a group of young musicians seeking new musical ground and having found a welcoming environment far from home. In November of 1963, The New York Contemporary Five were consolidating avant-garde jazz as pioneered by Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor in Copenhagen and Sweden, as New York clubs had yet to fully embrace the style The quintet had formed specifically for their engagement at Montmartre in Copenhagen and would disband for some time immediately after. Vol. 2 documents a quintet of experimental artists that had yet to gain the worldwide recognition that they enjoy today, more than 50 years later. In this early era of The New York Contemporary Five, Archie Shepp, who embodied his musical generation's experimental nature, shows compelling technical prowess that runs alongside an early-stage knack for experimentation. From a modern perspective, the album sounds particularly indicative of the Archie Shepp that history has come to know as a central figure in the primary canon of avant-garde jazz.

The relentless Bluebeard now has a soundtrack thanks to Dutch saxophone pride Yuri Honing. Yuri Honing dedicated his new album to the gruesome heritage of Bluebeard, title character of the 17thcentury French fairytale. The duke with the seven wives symbolizes other historic European figures. For example, Pablo Picasso, who conquered women and loved them, but also destroyed them; all these phases inspired his art. A sonnet by the first female Pullitzer Prize winner, Edna Millay, a variation on the fairytale, forms the basis of the album Bluebeard. With his Acoustic Quartet, Yuri Honing has been celebrating international success for many years. As with his previous album Goldbrun, the release of Bluebeard will be followed by an exhibition at Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle, a 'Gesamtkunstwerk' of paintings, sculptures and music in collaboration with painter Mariecke van derLinden. Honing's awards include three Edisons and the Boy Edgar Prijs 2012, and he has worked with countless greats such as Pat Metheny, CharlieHaden, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Paul Bley and Craig Taborn.

Harawi is a cycle of twelve songs scored for soprano and piano composed in 1945. Harawi (known to Spanish speakers as yaraví) designates a song about a fated love that ends in the death of both lovers. Messiaen remarked that "it is the story of Tristan and Isolde." The surrealistic text of Harawi is Messiaen's own. Using the musical structures Messiaen had created for Harawi, he built massive phrases in these songs, expanding space and time, creating extreme tenderness, vastness, clarity and abysses. In Harawi both lovers are not only human, but beings, which transform again and again. Destruction, pain, death, creation, joy, dance and love are not final - they are all everchanging particles of our interwoven cosmic existence. Already chosen as ONE OF THE BEST RELEASES OF 2019 (from a pre-release review copy) by Lynn René Bayley of Art Music Lounge: "This stunning album... features the still-young and somewhat outré German soprano Sarah Maria Sun... From the first notes of La ville qui dormait to the dying piano sound in Dans le noir, this is a performance that will absolutely rivet you... This clearly goes straight to the top of performances of this unusual and somewhat difficult song cycle..." Sarah Maria Sun is one of the foremost singers in the contemporary music scene with a repertoire of more than 900 compositions from the 20th & 21st centuries, including more than 320 world premieres. She was nominated for singer of the year by Opernwelt in 2017 for her role as Elsa in Sciarrino's monodrama Lohengrin and as Gwen in 4.48 Psychosis by Philip Venables. From 2007-2014, she was first soprano of the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, a chamber ensemble of 7 singers that has been one of the world's leading pioneers of contemporary music for 30 years.

Vinyl LP pressing. By the time drummer Pete La Roca recorded his debut album Basra in 1965 he had already appeared on nine Blue Note sessions as a sideman and spent time in bands led by Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane. But it was another tenor titan, Joe Henderson, that La Roca brought in as the sole horn voice to front a dynamic quartet that was completed by what liner note writer Ira Gitler called "one of the most attuned rhythm sections in jazz" featuring bassist Steve Swallow and pianist Steve Kuhn.

Limited 180gm vinyl LP pressing. Drummer Tony Williams had a long, fruitful relationship with Blue Note Records starting in the 1960s when he appeared on numerous post bop classics (Herbie Hancock Maiden Voyage, Eric Dolphy Out to Lunch, Andrew Hill Point of Departure) and made his first 2 albums as a leader: Life Time (1964) and Spring (1965). After Blue Note relaunched in 1984, Williams returned to the label eager to form a new acoustic band as a vehicle to perform his compositions.

These Wicked Things is the fourth release from the determinedly eclectic Boston-based band Beat Circus and the final installment in singer/multi-instrumentalist/composer Brian Carpenter's "Weird American Gothic" trilogy. The record bridges a number of disparate genres including experimental music, cowpunk, post-punk, Mexican folk music, mariachi music, and "spaghetti western" and giallo film scores. The cover and booklet include an 18-page graphic novelette by renowned Croatian artist Danijel Zezelj, best known for his live paintings, multimedia, and collaborations with DC Comics/Vertigo. These Wicked Things began after Carpenter was commissioned by the Berkeley Repertory Theater in Berkeley, California to compose music and lyrics for Dominic Orlando's play The Barbary Coast in 2014. Based on the true crime book by Herbert Asbury (Gangs of New York), The Barbary Coast detailed the violent rise of San Francisco in the late 1800s. The play centers around Joaquin Murieta, a Mexican who went on a revenge spree after his wife Rosita was killed by gold miners. Two versions of "Rosita" and some incidental music from the play are included. After recording These Wicked Things with Beat Circus at the legendary Q Division Studios in Boston, Carpenter flew out to Tucson, Arizona to mix the record with es-teemed producer Craig Schumacher (Calexico, Neko Case, Giant Sand.) Carpenter worked with Schumacher previously on his singer/songwriter outing The Far End of the World (2015, Accurate.) Special guests on These Wicked Things include trumpeter Jacob Valenzuela of Calexico, bass saxophonist Dana Colley of Morphine, and guitarist Stephen Ulrich of the NYC guitar noir trio Big Lazy.

The recording captures the quartet as if they were in your living room... This is the kind of album that makes record reviewing the best job in the world. (Gramophone Awards) "These performances set a new standard and reveal so much of what makes these quartets unique." (BBC Music Magazine) "This is extraordinarily bold playing - and they truly capture the sense that Smetana is writing symphonic quartet music." (Gramophone) "In their native repertoire they are well-nigh incomparable." (The Sunday Times) When the most prominent critics across the board concur in the opinion that an album is extraordinary, it certainly deserves to be released on vinyl. Although Smetana's chamber pieces are few in number, each of them - personal, many a time harboring a bold autobiographical statement - constitutes one of the cornerstones of Czech chamber music. Smetana wrote his two quartets in the twilight of his life, when he was afflicted by deafness. String Quartet No. 1, "From My Life", is a programme work: "My aim was to depict in tones the course of my life... The piece is of an intimate nature; therefore I deliberately wrote it for 4 instruments, which should converse as though within a close circle of friends..." Owing to it's being composed in an unconventional manner, String Quartet No. 2 comes across as a 20th-century work. The Pavel Haas Quartet's award-winning album has been released by Supraphon for vinyl fans and lovers of perfect sound on a top-quality LP, supplemented by a Hi-Res digital version. Smetana's intimate and timeless music, as performed by the Pavel Haas Quartet - for the first time on vinyl

For Simon Rattle, Jean Sibelius is "one of the most staggeringly original composers that there is". And indeed, this music has a unique musical language whose many beauties are particularly succinctly conveyed in Sibelius's seven symphonies. There is sonorous warmth as much as there is austere Nordic folklore. Moreover, there is a conceptual boldness that takes the listener on exciting musical journeys of discovery. In 2015, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Sibelius's birth, Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker presented the cycle live, which was met with unanimous delight by audiences and critics alike. "The Philharmoniker show that with them and Simon Rattle, Sibelius is in excellent hands," wrote the Berliner Zeitung, "because the orchestra has that astringency and sheer power which is so important for this kind of music." Simon Rattle was familiar with the music of Jean Sibelius from childhood. When, as a ten-year-old, he heard the Fifth Symphony live for the first time, it struck him - to use his own words - "like a thunderbolt". The Berliner Philharmoniker can also look back on a long Sibelius tradition and the orchestra was conducted by the composer himself in 1902. However, the first complete performance of the seven symphonies was not realized until 2010 under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle, with the Third Symphony being performed by the Philharmoniker for the first time. For many music lovers in Berlin, this new encounter with Sibelius was an exhilarating experience, and so it was only natural to repeat the performance of the cycle in Sibelius's anniversary year.

This release is the newest from Swedish vocalist Isabella Lundgren. It features arrangements of classic Bob Dylan songs, sung with Isabella's exceptional artistry. "Isabella Lundgren has a seriousness and a gravity that is unique. It's like she makes time stand still just by being, I guess that's what they call charisma and presence. And then she sings absolutely fantastically, with a natural, flowing time and a low-key but expressive phrasing. The fact the she has something to say with her lyrics, also adds to the magic. She is one of the greatest things that has ever happened to the Swedish Jazz scene". (Swedish Daily News) "Lundgren's incisive and agile voice, often reminiscent of Anita O'Day and Billie Holiday, came from a formally attired, deceptively slight frame and it thus was less of a surprise than it might have been to discover later that having studied music at New York's New School she is now in Stockholm studying to be a priest. She had the congregation in her hand right from the lightly accompanied rubato intro to That Old Black Magic that opened the set. There was also It's Magic and a couple of blues, all delivered with compelling authority and a mischievous sense of swing." (Mark Gilbert, JazzJournal)