Trumpeter Blue Mitchell's soulful, swinging style embodied the Blue Note ethos. His 1964 debut for the label, The Thing To Do, showcased his sound across a diverse set of tunes from hard bop to ballads to Calypso with an exceptional quintet featuring Junior Cook (tenor saxophone,) Chick Corea (piano,) Gene Taylor (bass,) and Al Foster (drums.) This Blue Note Classic Vinyl Edition is stereo, all-analog, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original master tapes, and pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal.
Roscoe Mitchell - One Head Four People - Roscoe Mitchell (Art Ensemble Of Chicago) was 2023's recipient of an American Society of Arts and Letters award which let to the creation of this work. Mainly a trio and quartet work Roscoe plays Bass saxophone as well as his percussion array.
Blue's Moods is a 1960 album by jazz trumpeter Blue Mitchell. Originally released on the Riverside label, it features Mitchell alongside Wynton Kelly (piano), Sam Jones (bass), and Roy Brooks (drums). This new edition of the album is released as part of the Original Jazz Classics Series and is pressed on 180-gram vinyl at RTI with all-analog mastering from the original tapes at Cohearent Audio and presented in a Tip-On Jacket.
Renowned flutist, former AACM chair, Nicole Mitchell, and innovative kora player, Bamako's musical ambassador, Ballake Sissoko have both defied conventions in their respective genres; Mitchell's Afrofuturist sound and cosmic ethic and Sissoko's integration of guitar progressions into kora compositions. Both push traditional forms into new spaces. Both bring a rich history of collaboration across various genres. - The magic began during a 2014 residency in the suburbs of Paris, France. Then, their host Frederic Duval suggested the rather awkward working title "Beyond Black". Three years later, with modest funding, Bamako musicians arrived in Chicago, and the project adopted a more fitting name inspired by a conversation between Mitchell and celebrated cultural critic/musician, Greg Tate: Bamako*Chicago Sound System. - Their musical collaboration echoes fusion artists like Foday Musa Suso and Herbie Hancock, yet it forges a unique path with a blend of depth and frequency more closely relatable to Alice Coltrane's lesser-known blues/'occidental' music, such as "Galaxy in Turia" and "Er Ra", along with the nuanced and celebrated Journey in Satchidananda. Like Coltrane, this album is transformative, taking listeners to other worlds through sonic transference. Ballake's post-traditional innovative writing leaves ample space for interpretation and breath, complementing Nicole's layered, complex otherworldly compositions. - The entire album embodies the African griot traditions of call and response, rooted in the Black Amerikan blues/jazz lineage. Some songs arouse the feeling of Bamako serenading Chicago through Malian streets and home-grown stories, creating a traditional yet powerfully sensory experience, reflecting a rich ancient culture. Other times, it feels like Chicago is guiding Bamako on a similar journey, as when Mitchell's butterfly-like, pied-piper build leads us through sonic ebbs and flows, echoing Chicago's deep blues and jazz roots.
Zealous Angles is the first documentation of pianist/composer Matt Mitchell's long-running trio featuring bassist Chris Tordini and drummer Dan Weiss. Mitchell has been called by The New York Times "a pianist of burrowing focus and an indispensable fixture of the contemporary vanguard." He is an anchor member of several significant and acclaimed creative music ensembles such as Tim Berne's Snakeoil, Dan Weiss's Starebaby, Miles Okazaki's Trickster, Ches Smith's We All Break, Kate Gentile's Find Letter X, Jon Irabagon's Outright!, Anna Webber's Simple Trio, John Hollenbeck's Large Ensemble, Linda Oh's Aventurine, Caroline Davis's Alula, Jonathan Finlayson's Sicilian Defense, and the Dave King Trio. He also performs regularly with many of the foremost musicians and bandleaders in improvised music, including Steve Coleman Dave Douglas, Rudresh Mahanthappa, John Zorn, Darius Jones, among many more.
The compositions on Zealous Angles represent Mitchell's explorations into the simultaneous use of polymetric and polyrhythmic music in a group context. Composed elements featuring phrases of different lengths are played simultaneously by each musician, resulting in a wobbly rhythmic tension with pulses locking in in surprising ways. The musicians also have the freedom to direct their interaction by playing any of the lines at any time, with a goal towards playing with maximum improvisational freedom while achieving heightened levels of rhythmic fluidity. Despite the teeter-tottering nature of the music, there is a palpable sense of swing and groove, completely shattering the notions of what is possible within the jazz piano trio tradition.
Vinyl LP pressing. Miami-born trumpeter Blue Mitchell had a soulful, swinging style that was equally at home in jazz, R&B, and funk settings. Mitchell been a sideman on Blue Note sessions led by Lou Donaldson, Jimmy Smith, Jackie McLean and appeared on numerous classics as a member of the Horace Silver Quintet before he began recording his own Blue Note leader albums. For his 1965 date Down With It! The trumpeter reconvened the same dynamic quintet that had recorded his label debut The Thing To Do the year before including his Silver bandmates Junior Cook on tenor saxophone and Gene Taylor on bass along with a 24-year-old Chick Corea on piano and 22-year-old Al Foster on drums. The band comes flying out of the gate on the boogaloo grooved opener "Hi-Heel Sneakers" with other highlights of the set including the high-spirited "March On Selma" and the gorgeous ballad "Alone, Alone, Alone."
Roscoe Mitchell Orchestra performs two masterpieces for the Fault Zone Festival April 21 2022. Distant Radio Transmission Fault Zone and Sustain and Run II features Roscoe on Alto Sax, James Fei on Synth, vocalist Thomas Buckner and a stellar thirty piece orchestra.. Also from the festival is Cards in 3D colors a duet written by Mr Mitchell for Piano and Violin and two Pieces from Space Trio
Limited 180gm vinyl LP pressing housed in gatefold jacket. Blue Mitchell was a member of Horace Silver's quintet before he began recording his own albums as leader for Blue Note through the 1960s. His 1966 album, Bring It Home to Me, is a bluesy and soulful hard bop date featuring the trumpeter with Junior Cook, Harold Mabern, Gene Taylor, and Billy Higgins. Blue Note Tone Poet Series features all-analog remastering.
Four CDs. The Reprise Years (1968-1971) features newly remastered versions of Joni Mitchell's first four studio albums - Song To A Seagull (1968), Clouds (1969), Ladies Of The Canyon (1970), and Blue (1971). In the case of Song To A Seagull, the original mix has been recently updated by Mitchell and mixer Matt Lee. The cover art for The Reprise Years (1968-1971) features a previously unseen self-portrait Mitchell drew during the time period and includes an essay by Grammy winning singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile.
Vast, deep and emotional are apt descriptions of the single-movement, 53-minute-long Symphony No. 2 by Christopher Tyler Nickel. The award-winning Canadian composer elaborates, “One can think of this music as consisting of mirrors between ideas that equally disturb yet entice. Each side of the reflection is in itself conceivably valid, but when facing each other friction and dissonance are created. The exquisitely alluring and the grotesque exist simultaneously. Perhaps another way to understand the symphony is as a meditation on the state of cognitive dissonance.” The entrepreneurial Clyde Mitchell conducts the Seattle-based Northwest Sinfonia on this world-premiere recording.
Recorded live at Le Guess Who on November 10, 2018. Shimmering columns of light will guide you, a grand synesthesia riding on a kaleidoscope, oscillating between hushed moments, where sound unfolds the firmament, unfurled like a cloak upon the shoulders of the real world. Listen: this is not a 'track', a circular appendage looped around a spindle and activated by some muscular stone on stylus. Too many people bled for the diamond there, too many questions remain trapped in the groove. What to do then, besides move the listener beyond the traps of expected sonics and into a menagerie, away from the strange hook of the promise of shelf-space or the obsessive atonal drone of, in fact, obsession?
The work of award-winning African American science fiction author Octavia E. Butler becomes increasingly prophetic as we move through the challenges of the new century. Her novels Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1996) use fiction to illuminate a horrific unraveling of 21st-century America into a despotic chaos where it's once-middle-class citizens struggle to survive in an incredibly violent and fragmented reality, void of normalcy, family, and resources. In the 1990s, Butler's Parables warned readers about a possible disintegration of American culture and infrastructure, among the many risks of tyrannical rule. Within Butler's storyline, the character Lauren Oya Olamina, a preacher's daughter of African heritage, helps to rebuild her community through offering Earthseed, an egalitarian philosophy and spiritual practice which honors inquiry, independent thinking, and realistic acceptance of constant change. Inspired by and in tribute to Octavia E. Butler, composers Nicole M. Mitchell and Lisa E. Harris have created their own sonic EarthSeed, also in response to the real chaos and horrific nature of our times. EarthSeed is the third of Mitchell's projects inspired by the literature of Butler and marks a first compositional collaboration between Harris and Mitchell. Mitchell's two previous recorded Butler-inspired works are Xenogenesis Suite (Firehouse 12) and Intergalactic Beings (FPE). EarthSeed was commissioned by the Art Institute of Chicago and premiered on June 22, 2017
Bonds: The Ballad of the Brown King & Selected Songs / Merriweather, The Dessoff Choirs & Orchestra
Avie Records
CD
$17.99Nov 01, 2019
A WQXR-FM Best Classical Recording for 2019
Twentieth-century African American composer Margaret Bonds receives long overdue recognition with the world premiere recording of her crowning achievement, The Ballad of the Brown King. With an expressly written libretto by Bonds’ friend Langston Hughes, this Christmas cantata which focuses on Balthazar, the dark-skinned king who journeyed to Bethlehem to witness the birth of Jesus Christ, is beautifully interpreted by New York City-based The Dessoff Choirs and Orchestra, outstanding soloists soprano Laquita Mitchell, mezzo-soprano Lucia Bradford and tenor Noah Stewart, under the baton of their charismatic conductor, Malcolm J. Merriweather. Bonds authority Dr. Ashley Jackson contributes the inspired liner notes. This unique seasonal album also includes a selection of specially arranged songs, including a setting of Hughes’ seminal poem I, Too, Sing America, performed by baritone Merriweather and Jackson on solo harp.
REVIEW:
Nearly 60 years after its premiere, conductor Malcolm J. Merriweather and the phenomenal New York-based Dessoff Choirs have at last provided a way experience Margaret Bonds’ genius cantata, The Ballad of the Brown King. After luxuriating in this sumptuous setting of the Nativity story (with a libretto by Langston Hughes), be sure to listen to Bonds’ heart-rending Three Dream Portraits, sung forcefully by Merriweather himself.
Phalanx Ambassadors is the latest release from pianist/keyboardist/composer Matt Mitchell, whom PopMatters calls "the most complete and well-integrated improvising pianist of the last 15 years." They also called his prior release, A Pouting Grimace, "brilliant and varied... animated by breathtaking compositional imagination and startling arrangements." His bold new release features works that burst forth with intricate detail, featuring precise execution of complex polyrhythms and irrational meters, adventurous harmonic exploration and otherworldly melodies. While rigorously structured, the music leaves ample room for varied layers of improvisation. The eponymously-named band - with Mitchell on piano and keyboards, Miles Okazaki on guitars, Patricia Brennan on vibraphone and marimba, Kim Cass on bass, and Kate Gentile on drums, along with producer David Torn - immerse themselves completely in Mitchell's idiosyncratic sound world, creating music that eludes genre boundaries and comparisons.
Grace Williams (19 February 1906 - 10 February 1977) was a Welsh composer. Born in the coastal town of Barry, near Cardiff, Grace learned piano and violin and developed her musical skills early. She won the Morfydd Owen scholarship to Cardiff University in 1923 where she studied under Professor David Evans and in 1926 she proceeded to the Royal College of Music, London, where she was taught by Gordon Jacob and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Williams is regarded by many as one of Wales finest composers. She wrote two symphonies, the earlier being the first symphony ever composed by a Welsh composer, a mass, one opera, numerous other pieces for orchestras and chamber ensemble, as well as accomplished vocal works. She was also the first British woman to score a feature film, with Blue Scar in 1949. Her chamber music, recorded here for the first time, spans 40 years.
In 2006 the Scottish Chamber Orchestra celebrated Mozart’s 250th birthday with this special release of Wind Concertos performed by the section principals of the Orchestra. Austrian conductor Alexander Janiczek was the ideal choice to lead the orchestra in the well-loved repertoire of his fellow Austrian. Alison Mitchell performs the Flute Concerto; its charming melodies and elegant phrasing belie Mozart’s claim to dislike the instrument. Written when Mozart was just eighteen, the Bassoon Concerto allows soloist Ursula Leveaux to showcase the full range and expressivity of her instrument. Maximiliano Martín gives a virtuosic performance of arguably the most famous of these three showpieces, the Clarinet Concerto. Written in 1791 for a Stadler clarinet, which extended the instrument’s lower range by four notes, Martín has adapted the text of the first edition (published with the solo part adapted to suit an ordinary clarinet) to make the best use of the clarinet’s lowest register as Mozart intended.
This December 1977 recording features two of the most prominent AACM musicians, Roscoe Mitchell and Anthony Braxton. Mitchell's composition "run the gamut, beginning with the darkly gorgeous opener that features Braxton's contrabass clarinet nestling evocatively beneath the composer's earthy flute, Mitchell's other pieces investigate the sparer, more abstract realm, as the duo's wide variety of reeds populate the sonic environment with scattered moans, squeaks and pops. Overall, this is a fine meeting between two of the most forward-looking thinkers and players in the music. Recommended. " - Brian Olewnick, allmusic. Com Anthony Braxton also contributes three compositions.
Rubinstein: Piano Concerto No. 1 & Don Quixote / Zamparas, Mitchell
Centaur Records
CD
$18.99Jul 08, 2016
A new addition to Centaur's Complete Recordings of Anton Rubinstein Piano Concertos, this release features Grigorios Zamparas, Jon Caender Mitchell and the Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic Orchestra. Anton Rubinstein was a Russian pianist, composer and conductor where he ranked among the besth 19th-century pianists. Grigorios Zamparas has received worldwide acclaim for his astounding musicianship and versatile performances. He has performed with prestigious orchestras such as the Porto Alegre Symphony Orchestra, Indiana University Symphony Orchestra and many others.
This album is the third installment in Centaur’s cycle of the complete piano concertos of Anton Rubinstein (1829-94). +One of the great piano virtuosos of his day and a prolific composer, much of Rubinstein's musical output has long fallen out of public consciousness, only in recent decades receiving renewed performer and audience interest. +The Greece-born pianist Grigorios Zamparas is currently Associate Professor of Music, Piano, University of Tampa, FL., and an active international recitalist.
Harry Partch is an American visionary and stubborn individualist... He has built his own musical world out of microtones, hobo speech, elastic octaves and percussion instruments made from hubcaps and nuclear cloud chambers. Recently ... an army of young music lovers stormed New York’s Whitney Museum to hear Harry Partch and his thirteen disciples produce a music that was totally personal and eclectic in the best sense. African polyrhythms, and ancient Greek modes, bits of Babylonia and the pulse of the American diesel engine all gathered into a richly erotic, primitive, fresh and stirring drama of sound.
-- Newsweek
Includes bonus tracks: The Instruments of Harry Partch.
Nicole Mitchell's Ice Crystal project explores water and glass chemistry of flute and vibes, by combining the creative flutist with young luminary Jason Adasiewicz on vibraphone. Ice Crystal's sound reminds US of the legendary collaboration between flutist Eric Dolphy and vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, but with a Chicago twist. Expression of yet another color in Mitchell's kaleidoscope of approaches, Aquarius is blues-inflected serenity, playfully swinging to the ethereal. Mitchell may have migrated to California, but her Chicago story continues, as she teams up with veteran improvisers Joshua Abrams (bass), Frank Rosaly (drums) and Jason Adasiewicz to take free swing to the ninth degree.
Rubinstein: Caprice Russe; Piano Concerto No 5; Der Thurm Zu Babel Overture / Mitchell, Zamparas
Centaur Records
CD
$18.99Jan 29, 2013
RUBINSTEIN Piano Concerto No. 5, Op. 94. Caprice russe, Op. 102. Der Thurm zu Babel, Op. 80: Overture • Grigorios Zamparas (pn); Jon Ceander Mitchell, cond; Bohuslav Martin? PO • CENTAUR 3204 (74:55)
The fifth and last of Anton Rubinstein’s piano concertos was composed in 1874. Dedicated to the French pianist and composer Charles-Valentin Alkan (misspelled “Arkan” in Centaur’s notes), it is by far the longest of Rubinstein’s works in this genre, comparable in duration if not stature to the concertos of Brahms. The first movement alone lasts over 22 minutes in this performance, with a total timing of 50 minutes. Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that Rubinstein chose the same key for this work, E?-Major, as did Beethoven for his “Emperor” Concerto. That lengthy first movement is a grand, expansive, often rhapsodic statement, although as is usual with Rubinstein, there is too much repetition. The slow movement strikes me as rather perfunctory, but the brilliant, exuberant finale, at 17 minutes nearly as long as the first movement, offers considerable pleasure. The performance by Grigorios Zamparas is straightforward, crisp, fluent, and technically proficient. He does not quite match the brilliance, forcefulness, and spontaneity that pianists such as Joseph Banowetz and Marc-André Hamelin have brought to other Rubinstein concertos, although he does contribute some pretty impressive rapid passagework. Hamelin, however, has not recorded this concerto, and the Banowetz reading, on Marco Polo, is currently available only as an MP3 download. I have not heard it, but the Marco Polo catalog is gradually being transferred to Naxos, so Banowetz may eventually be available again on CD. On the other hand, the Centaur recording, although a bit dry and unreverberant, is better focused and balanced and more realistic than the Marco Polo series, and the piano sound is solid and well defined. Peaks have plenty of impact and are free from strain or harshness. No other recordings of this concerto are currently available.
The Caprice russe, an appealing 20-minute fantasy for piano and orchestra on three folk or folk-like themes, was written in 1878. Zamparas once again offers a straightforward and proficient performance, perhaps lacking a degree of the flamboyance that Rubinstein’s music seems to demand. The only other recording of this piece in the catalog is that of Banowetz, also coupled with his performance of the Fifth Concerto and therefore available only as an MP3. Rubinstein’s “sacred opera” Der Thurm zu Babel (The Tower of Babel), one of several he wrote on biblical themes and to German librettos, dates from 1869. Its brief overture is deliberate and brooding but uneventful. No other recordings of the overture and none of the opera itself are available.
Under Jon Ceander Mitchell, the Bohuslav Martin? Philharmonic shows itself to be a capable and proficient ensemble, although lacking the tonal opulence of some more famous orchestras. The violins, at least as recorded here, can sometimes seem thin and steely, but the winds are reliable, more so than in the Slovak orchestra used in the Banowetz recordings of the first four concertos. (A different Slovak orchestra performs in the Fifth Concerto.)
In the absence of any current competition on CD, I can recommend these accomplished and well-recorded performances to anyone interested in Rubinstein’s music.
Reviews of music by the English composer Pickard (b. 1963) have stated that ‘he has the technique and the temperament to emerge as one of the great symphonists of the 21st century’. These works reveal a powerful rhythmic drive, a feeling for toughly argued drama and a poetic sensitivity to atmosphere.
Home For The Holidays / Russell, Cincinnati Pops Orchestra
Fanfare Cincinnati
CD
$9.49$18.99Save 50%Sep 25, 2012
With over 10 million recordings sold around the world, no orchestra has had more albums on the Billboard charts than the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra! Home for the Holidays is the culmination of a year-long celebration of the inaugural season of Pops Conductor John Morris Russell. Featuring an exceptionally diverse collection of Yuletide classics including "Deck the Halls," "O Holy Night" with powerhouse tenor Rodrick Dixon, and New York Voices' jazzy twist on "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town," alongside Gounod's "Ave Maria" and "Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus," which cleverly combines Edward Elgar's "Nimrod" from Enigma Variations with text from an 1897 editorial in the New York Sun, narrated by Broadway star Brian Stokes Mitchell expressing the child-like wonderment felt during the holiday season.
Garden In Harp - Compositions By Gary Schocker / Emily Mitchell
Azica Records
CD
$18.99Mar 27, 2012
Emily Mitchell enjoyed a 30-year career in New York City where she was principal harpist for the incomparable Eos Orchestra working closely with many of today’s most active composers. She was an established name in the television, motion picture and recording studios performing on numerous film scores and radio and television commercials. Ms. Mitchell has toured the United States as a soloist for Columbia Artists Management. In this recording she explores the works of composer Gary Schocker, one of today's most prolific and well known composers.
