2021 release. With Special Guest - Najee! A proven hit maker with over 25 smooth jazz radio hits in his amazing career, all of Brian's previous releases have entered the Billboard Contemporary Jazz Charts in the top 5 and have contained at least 2 top 5 Smooth Jazz Radio hits, many of them #1s!! Both as a solo performer who has recorded and shared the stage with such greats as Boney James and George Duke and as the featured keyboardist and music director of the Dave Koz Band, Brian performs in front of an incredibly large number of devoted Smooth Jazz fans on a non-stop basis! Highlights include the first hit single "When I Found You" the inspired duet with Najee, "Mystical" the romantic ballad "When I Found You" and more brilliant Brian Simpson originals!

ALL THE DREAMS

Tenor sax player's 1959 session features the very first recording of Grant Green & young Elvin Jones on drums, also Harold Mabern-piano, Gene Ramey-bass.

2007 reissue and repackaged in a slipcase, now part of Rhino Entertainment's excellent Greatest Hits series. Formed in Dayton, Ohio in 1978, R&B/funk outfit Zapp scored a string of hits marked by their prominent use of the vocoder alongside their fat electric grooves. Comprised of the Troutman brothers (leader Roger on vocals and guitar, Larry on percussion, Lester on drums and Tony on bass), Zapp's self titled 1980 debut LP was produced by P-Funk legend Bootsy Collins. It soared up the R&B and Pop charts and launched a series of seriously funky discs. Features the #1 smash 'Dance Floor', the Top 10 hits 'I Can Make You Dance,', 'Computer Love' and more on this 17 track collection that went platinum when it was originally released in '93. Warner.

Fats Waller - All The Hits And More 1922-43 swing era, an artist with an unmistakably distinctive style and a way with a song whose work transcended the different strands of jazz that emerged during the 20 years or so when he established his reputation and enjoyed all his success as a recording artist. He was renowned as an influential innovator of the Harlem style of stride piano, but also became famous playing the organ and celeste on his sessions. Recording both solo and in small groups, and equally well-known and loved for his instrumental and vocal recordings, he had over 60 hits between 1929 and 1943, when he died suddenly from pneumonia at the tragically early age of 39. This great-value 75-track 3-CD collection contains all those hits plus selected other recordings which are among his most highly-regarded and popular work. It naturally features the recordings for which he is best-known, including his No. 1s with "Truckin'", "A Little Bit Independent", "All My Life", "It's A Sin To Tell A Lie", "Smarty" and "Two Sleepy People and classics like "Honeysuckle Rose", "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter". It's a substantial and enjoyable showcase for one of the great personalities of jazz.

ALL THE HITS AND MORE 1923-1940

DUKE ELLINGTON - ALL THE HITS AND MORE 1927-54 - It's a comprehensive overview of his most successful output during a primary era of his career Duke Ellington was one of the most important and influential figures in the entire history of jazz, as pianist, bandleader, composer and innovator, his career spanning half century as the genre evolved from the early days of electric recording. However, while critics and commentators focus on his over-arching significance as a giant of the medium, it's easy to forget that he was a genius at composing tune and songs for the medium of the 3-minute 78rpm single, and during the first three decades of his career before rock 'n' roll changed the pop landscape irrevocably, he had more than 70 records that were credited as chart hits. This great-value 4-CD set comprised all those 77 recordings which are listed in recognised sources as hits, plus another 20 or so which are regarded as significant compositions which became standards, or were hits for other artists. It includes his No. 1s with "Three Little Words", "Cocktails For Two", "I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart", and the Billboard R&B No. 1s "Don't Get Around Much Anymore", "Sentimental Lady", "Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me" and "Main Stem", along with classics like "Mood Indigo", "Sophisticated Lady", "Moon Glow", "Solitude", "Caravan", "Take The 'A' Train" and "I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good". It's a comprehensive overview of his most successful output during a primary era of his career, and a great showcase for the artistry which made the Duke such a revered and iconic personality.

The Dorsey Brothers Orchestra - All The Hits And More 1928-35 [It's fascinating to hear two such fine musicians and leaders in collaboration] Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey were both highly successful musicians and bandleaders during the early jazz and swing eras, but for a few years during the early part of their careers they had a joint enterprise called The Dorsey Brothers Orchestra, which was hugely popular and successful, racking up 25 hits in the space of eight years from 1920s into the '30s. Maybe inevitably, as two strong-minded personalities, they had a falling-out, and went their separate ways to have long and illustrious careers into the 1950s. This 72-track 3-CD collection comprises selected A&B sides from their releases on the Okeh, Banner Harmony, Melotone, Columbia, Brunswick, Vocalion and Decca labels from these years. It includes all their 27 hits from this era, including the No. 1s "Lullaby Of Broadway" and "Chasing Shadows", and the Top 5 entries "What A Difference A Day Made", "I Believe In Miracles", "You Are My Lucky Star" and "I've Got A Feeling You're Foolin'". There are many big names among their featured vocalists, and those with performances included in this collection are Scrappy Lambert, Bob Crosby, Ethel Waters, Bing Crosby, Mildred Bailey, Irving Kaufman, Kay Weber, Chick Bullock, Jean Bowes, Elmer Feldkamp and more. It's fascinating to hear two such fine musicians and leaders in collaboration, and this collection offers a substantial overview of their time together as well as a feast of early swing music.

Teddy Wilson - All The Hits And More 1935-39 Teddy Wilson is often referred to as the definitive swing pianist, stylish, elegant and technically and artistically brilliant, and adept in any setting, be it solo, small bands or orchestras, as a leader or sideman. He was renowned as one of the most sensitive and sought-after accompanists, especially by female vocalists of the day, and is particularly celebrated for his work with Billie Holiday. In the era before the introduction of the Billboard charts in 1940, Joel Whitburn's respected book "Pop Memories 1890-1954", which lists artists hits based on various sources, and also the Your Hit Parade chart published by the popular radio show, are treated as the most reliable guides as to what were "hits". This 47-track 2-CD collection comprises all Teddy Wilson's 38 career hits based on those sources under his own name, along with selected A & B sides from this era. It Includes the No. 1 hits "Carelessly" and "You Can't Stop Me From Dreaming", and other Top 3 hits with "The Way You Look Tonight", "Pennies From Heaven" "There's A Lull In My Life" and "Remember Me". It includes performances by featured vocalists Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Helen Ward, Red Harper and others, and recordings with major jazz names likes Roy Eldridge, Lionel Hampton, Ben Webster, Cootie Williams, Harry Carney, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Cozy Cole, Harry James, Buck Clayton and more, featured in his ensembles. Looking at his career from a particular angle, his hits, it's a great showcase for an important and influential artist.

Larry Clinton was a trumpeter, trombonist and clarinettist who, when in his twenties, became a successful arranger for Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Glen Gay's Casa Loma Orchestra and Bunny Berigan during the mid-1930s before starting his own orchestra in 1937. Playing a mixture of current pop in the "sweet" style, ambitious jazz-styled instrumentals and swing arrangements of classical pieces, he had a string of nearly 40 hits through into the early '40s, and when he picked up the threads after service during WWII. Most of his hits featured the fine voice of his star vocalist Bea Wain, whose contributions were a key element of his success. This excellent-value 48-track 2-CD set comprises all his 38 hits plus other selected releases on the Victor, Bluebird and Decca labels, many featuring Bea Wain, and features the No. 1s "Cry, Baby, Cry", "Heart And Soul", "My Reverie", and "Deep Purple", along with sixteen other Top 10 hits, with many examples of the early commercial recordings of some of the landmark compositions of the Great American Songbook era. Along with Bea Wain, other featured vocalists are Dick Todd, Ford Leary, Mary Dugan, Helen Southern, Peggy Mann and Butch Stone. The collection provides not only a thoroughly entertaining showcase for a top class orchestra about which not much is heard these days, as well as for the vocal talents of Bea Wain, but also an enlightening overview of some of the most popular music of those years.

Rosemary Clooney, well-known in recent years as the aunt of movie star George Clooney, was one of the most popular and successful pop singers of the immediate post-war decades, racking up a remarkable string of hits in the early '50s. She called herself "a sweet singer with a big band sensibility"

Classical Music

Music by Golden Globe nominee Daniel Pemberton (Steve Jobs, Gold)

All the Way

On his debut Navona Records release, ALL THE WAY BACK, pianist and composer Vytautas Smetona presents a collection of keyboard repertoire that highlights his enthralling and committed interpretations of some of the great composers' masterworks as well as an example of his faculty as a cultivated and dynamic composer.

The pieces on this album offer Smetona technical feats and expressive themes, all of which the pianist handles with ease, determination, and eloquence. From Bach's lyrical and joyous Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp Major, BWV 848 to the somber and dramatic range of Liszt's Funerailles (October 1849), Smetona evokes passion and refinement in his performances. The technical mastery of works such as Brahms's Intermezzo in B-flat Minor, Op. 117, No. 2, Schumann's Fantasie in C Major, Op. 17, and Chopin's Ballade No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 23 is handled by Smetona with sophistication, lucidity, and powerful passage work. Smetona shows us a balance between accurately playing the notes on the score and interpreting the feeling between them.

Triple threat guitarist, producer and composer Chuck Leob is the quintessential Smooth Jazz artist. Leob's CDs are quite possibly the most played on Smooth Jazz radio. His 5th album on Shanachi is entitled All There Is. Featuring special guest Krik Whalum First single "As Is"

Anyone who has seen the conductor Elim Chan on stage is familiar with the immense energy produced by her baton. With the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, of which she has been Principal Conductor since 2019, she celebrates a genre dear to her heart, ballet music, which places the emphasis on both physical movement and orchestral power. More than a century of ballet music is presented here, with excerpts from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet suites, oscillating between passionate love and fatal violence; Suite no.2 from Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, the fruit of his first collaboration with Diaghilev in 1912, which he described as a ‘choreographic symphony’; and finally a work by Elizabeth Ogonek, All These Lighted Things, premiered in 2017. Although the title of these ‘three little dances for orchestra’ comes from a poem that evokes a soothing union with the earth at the dawn of a sunny day, the piece ends with a sort of folk dance that degenerates into an orchestral storm.

REVIEWS:

Conductor Elim Chan’s remarkable ear for detail is the star of All These Lighted Things, her new, dance-themed album with the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra.

Its title comes from a short set of pieces by Elizabeth Ogonek, who wrote them in 2017 for Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Highly abstracted though Ogonek’s approach to dance forms here may be, All These Lighted Things’ three movements are highlighted by a constant sense of invention and blazing colors. Particularly striking are the languid textures of the murky middle one.

The Suite No. 2 from Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé channels a similar sound world. Though Chan’s approach to the “Danse générale” reads a shade restrained, there’s no denying the clarity or warmth of the Antwerp ensemble’s performance. Indeed, “Lever du jour” is sumptuous and beautifully directed while the “Pantomime’s” flute solos sound fresh and improvisatory.

But it’s in Chan’s compilation of movements from the first two suites from Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet that her virtuosity as a conductor shines the brightest. A host of subtleties emerge, from the quietly suspended woodwind tones in “The Montagues and Capulets” to the marshmallowy textures in the middle of “Friar Laurence,” the burbling accompaniments and pattering flute figures in the “Balcony Scene,” and the luminous play of light and shadow during “Romeo and Juliet Before Parting.”

Taken with their judicious tempos and strong feeling for the music’s narrative character, Chan and the Antwerp SO provide a performance of this favorite that is revelatory in all the right and needed ways. Keep an eye on this pairing: they’re worth watching.

-- The Arts Fuse

Matthew Shipp Trio + Nicole Mitchell - "All things Are" - Matthew Shipp (piano), Nicole Mitchell (flute, alto flute), Michael Bisio (double bass), Newman Taylor Baker (drums)

Classical Music

Music director Robert Istad writes: "Tarik O'Regan's music captured my attention when I heard a live performance of "The Ecstasies Above" in 2007. His music grabbed me with it's rhythmic audacity, harmonic daring and unique wit. Tarik became our composer in residence at Pacific Chorale shortly after I was appointed Artistic Director, and this recording shares some fruits of our collaboration, including that auspicious "Ecstasies Above", one brand new commission ("Facing West") and three world premiere recordings including "All Things Common." Our concert took place in Samueli Theater at Segerstrom Center for the Arts on May 18th, 2019. We reset the hall and held our recording sessions on the evening of May 20th and the afternoon of May 21st. As before when my Cal State Fullerton University Singers recorded with Yarlung, our producer Bob Attiyeh asked that Pacific Chorale and I prepare each piece (or each movement of the longest work) carefully enough so we could record it successfully in one take. We succeeded! The performance you hear is real. This is not surgically stitched together from many takes. Some of the tracks on this album are the only take we recorded, and others we performed multiple times until we had the flavor and execution that Tarik and Bob and I wanted. We worked hard to capture the sound Tarik had in his mind when writing these works, and to reflect accurately what I hear when conducting Pacific Chorale singers. Yarlung used one stereo microphone (an AKG C24 which used to belong to Frank Sinatra. With such minimalist recording techniques, there is nowhere to hide. But the results, when we succeed, are worth the extra effort. I hope you agree."

With my second album, "All Things Will Clear Up, Eventually", I want to encourage people to pause-to take a moment to truly feel the struggles in their lives, reflect on themselves, and engage in introspection. It's like lying on your back and gazing at the clouds, watching them appear, shift, and eventually dissolve. You begin to see shapes and patterns-new things you wouldn't have noticed if you hadn't taken the time to look a little longer. I believe that pausing and "gazing at the clouds" is essential for our mental well-being. It keeps us from fleeing into the rush of daily life and ignoring the difficult parts. Instead, it invites us to slow down and attentively observe what surfaces and moves within and around us. And I believe that pausing gives hope. These are the moments when, even in the midst of difficulty, we slowly begin to notice new possibilities and beauty-the blue sky between the clouds, the childlike images hidden in the darker ones. I believe my music can play a comforting and empowering role in this process.

Swiss saxophonist Omri Ziegele presents with the Tomorrow Trio an adventurous line-up featuring the legendary Dutch drummer Han Bennink and accomplished Swiss double bassist Christian Weber. A collaboration that offers a perfect platform for Ziegele's robust, powerful sound and his dynamic phrasing, while at the same time showing interest in poetry and the spoken word. "If the Tomorrow Trio has a defining feature it is the potently communicative dialogue of the three individuals. It can be felt in the tight entwining of certain motifs by sax and drums; the snapchat rhythmic exchange of horn and drums; the well-judged release of cumulative tension by the whole band," writes Kevin Le Gendre in the liner notes.

Jazz pianist is in a trio setting, feat. bassist Peter Washington & drummer Kenny Washington.

Personnel includes: Frank Sinatra, Connie Haines, The Pied Pipers (vocals);
Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra.
Recorded between 1940 & 1942.
In 1939, Frank Sinatra scored his very first success, "All Or Nothing At All," with trumpeter Harry James' Orchestra. The following year the young singer began an extraordinary two year apprenticeship with the much classier Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, a regimen which taught him everything he needed to know about musical taste and judgement if not popular adulation. Make no mistake, however; from the beginning, through sheer dint of will, Sinatra managed to make his time with the master trombonist and bandleader a collaboration of musical equals.
Milestone recordings like "Stardust," "I'll Be Seeing You," "I'll Never Smile Again," "Everything Happens To Me" et al are both big band classics and the beginning of a new age of romantic popular singing. No male singer had ever gone as far as Sinatra did in exploring the tender feelings expressed in these songs, in identifying so completely with a given song's meaning. It was a revolution in popular sensibility that we are still living through several decades later.

For the second installment of an ambitious five-CD project, undertaken to observe his fiftieth birthday, master bassist Rodney Whitaker convenes a world-class sextet to pay homage to the oeuvre of Duke Ellington. It's a subject that Whitaker came to know intimately during his 9-year tenure with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, regarding it as his Ph.D in Ellingtonia through performance, deep study, and spirited conversation with Wynton Marsalis and bandmates through those years. With a front line of modern jazz masters - Brian Lynch, Michael Dease and Diego Rivera, the fiery, modern aesthetic of drummer Karriem Riggins, along with pianist Richard Roe and vocals by Rockelle Fortin, Whitaker celebrates the timelessness of Ellington's works by allowing them to live and breathe through the freewheeling, "cutting session" atmosphere he created for the session.

Piano/organ/drums is an uncommon combination, but how well it works in the hands (and feet) of such sensitive performers! (Mark Gardner) In this strikingly unusual “Trio” format Andy LaVerne finds a most tasteful and brilliant partner in organist Gary Versace and a new musical horizon to explore.

Cage and Dowland: the two Johns, four hundred years apart, share a common taste for sober expression, concise forms and intimate realization - and for the pleasure that comes from words as such. Each cultivates this desire in his own way. Cage, like a tightrope walker, approaches the essence of musical thought with humor, lightness, and depth, and Dowland aims for the expression of feelings in their purest form. Cultivating as always a fertile anachronism, the Th�l�me ensemble brings together the complete works for two voices and lute by Dowland, several compositions by Cage, and world-renowned artist Sting offers a reworking of his hit song, "Shape of My Heart", which in this new arrangement becomes a kind of 21st-century lute song, coming full circle on an album where Renaissance and present meet, mingle, and merge to transcend the boundaries of aesthetics and genres.

Mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton burst upon the global opera and concert scene in recent years after having won many of the world’s most prestigious prizes for vocal excellence and accomplishments. Delos has scored a major coup in releasing her debut album. Jamie’s well-chosen program of late-Romantic repertoire begins with eight of Gustav Mahler’s finest lieder- including his wonderful Five Ruckert Songs- before treating us to the rare delights of Antonin Dvorak’s song cycle Gypsy Songs. Her album concludes with even more seldom-heard selections from the many lovely Swedish-language songs of Finnish master Jean Sibelius. This sublime release- further graced by pianist Brian Zeger’s peerless collaboration- will take your breath away, and leave you hungry for more from Jamie Barton, considered by many of the world’s top vocal and operatic experts to be the rising mezzo of our time.

This new collection of my choral music features recent commissions from choirs near and far. The overall theme of the album is one of hope but also concern for our relationship with living things and the planet we inhabit. Thus, in Earthificat I have based a new secular, environmental text on the words and structure of The Magnificat and in Renew Me In The Sunlight the words ask for strength to move forward in balance with nature. There is a movement, Reverence from my secular mass M=pV, a work about our stewardship of nature and our place within the universe and a setting of some beautiful words by the great 'nature poet' William Wordsworth. Alongside this are Christmas settings and other choral songs. The timbres weave between my more classical 'a cappella and strings' texture, towards a more jazz inflected sound world in tracks such as On This Night and Let All The People Praise You. I have worked many times with the inspirational Newcastle-based choir Voices of Hope who won BBC Choir of The Year in 2016 and who have continued to grow in vocal magic and audience since that time. It's been a joy to work with them and their choir director Mark Edwards alongside my own ensemble and string players from The Alina Orchestra.

ALL YOU CAN BEAT