Blessed with a captivating, richly sonorous singing voice, Japan-born, Seattle-based Valerie Joyce recorded two albums for audiophile label Chesky Records in the 2000s. The first of them, 2005's critically acclaimed New York Blue, featured the young singer supported by a crack Big Apple jazz band: formidable pianist Andy Ezrin, alternating bassists John Hebert and Tim Lefebvre, and drum stalwart Gene Jackson. They are augmented on some tracks by the veteran session musician Lawrence Feldman's smoky saxophone. Joyce's intriguing repertoire blends deft interpretations of well-known evergreens from The Great American Songbook ('Darn That Dream') with jazz standards (Miles Davis' 'Blue In Green'), jazz-tinged R&B ('Fever'), rock (Jimi Hendrix's 'Little Wing'), and pop (The Beatles' 'Golden Slumbers'). Bolstered with new liner notes featuring a recent interview with Valerie Joyce, New York Blue is reissued in 2026 as part of the Chesky Original Masters series on 180g One Step Pressing Vinyl LP and SACD Hybrid Stereo.

STANDARD QUESTIONS

CANDY STORE BLUES: THE SINGLES & ALBUMS COLLECTION

REEL

Vinyl LP pressing. Dinah Shore was one of the USA's most popular and successful entertainers, her peak recording career spanning the war years and the immediate post-war decades, when she also became a high-profile TV host with her own weekly Chevrolet-sponsored show, which more or less defined the USA in the 1950s. She was one of the very first female singers to come to prominence purely as a solo artist, rather than as a big band singer, and was such a prolific chart performer that, having had her first hit in 1939, she had racked up more than 50 hits by the end of the '40s, including memorable No.1s like "I'll Walk Alone", "Anniversary Song", "The Gypsy" and "Buttons And Bows". She continued scoring hits through what was often called the "Golden age of popular music" in the early '50s, scoring her final chart entry in 1960, by which time the rock 'n' roll and teen revolution had largely superseded artists of her generation. This fantastic 15 track LP provides a great introduction to Shore's prolific success by featuring the recordings which brought her greatest popularity. On top of her huge hits already mentioned, it also includes "Candy", "Dear Hearts & Gentle People", "Baby It's Cold Outside" and "Sweet Violets", all showcasing her distinctive style and talent and provides an entertaining and nostalgic celebration of an artist who was such a glamorous icon of her era.

BEST LAID PLANS

BEAT ME DADDY: THE SINGLES COLLECTION 1939-47

THAT WHICH IS PLACED UPON THE ALTAR

3ELEMENTS: CONVERSATIONS OF HOPE

MEMENTO

TEMPUS

Every new release from Quinsin Nachoff is a headline event, a radical combining and recombining of sonic and conceptual innovations, ever-evolving textures, powerful melodies and rhythms, that always open up new vistas for exploration while clearly marking the way back to what has come before. The album Patterns from Nature is an unashamedly ambitious showcase for his remarkable abilities as a composer and orchestrator, working within the space where the heartfelt collaborative improvisation of jazz meets the adventurous rigor of contemporary music and the depth and complexity of conceptual art. As composer, Nachoff created the closely written, intricately detailed scores for a pair of large-ensemble pieces. As bandleader, he oversaw the realisation of those scores by a hand-picked team of remarkable genre-crossing musicians, including pianist Matt Mitchell, percussionist Satoshi Takeishi, bassist Carlo de Rosa, clarinetist Francois Houle, trombonist Ryan Keberle, and the internationally renowned Molinari String Quartet, supported by a large chamber ensemble conducted by JC Sanford. As interdisciplinary collaborator, he worked with physicist Dr. Stephen Morris, whose research into emergent patterns in nature informed the project's structural concepts, and four filmmakers - Tina de Groot, Lee Hutzulak, Gita Blak, and Udo Prinsen - originally conceived alongside them for a multimedia version of the work, resulting in the titular Patterns from Nature suite of four contrasting movements that engage the listener at every level.

GOODBYE STRAWBERRY HILL

The Big Band of the Deutsche Oper Berlin is celebrating it's 20th anniversary and dedicating itself to French jazz. During the German occupation, it stood for freedom and resistance, and in the post-war period it became the soundtrack of existentialism and an expression of the attitude to life of an entire generation. In the nightclubs of Saint-Germain-des-Pr�s, musicians such as Miles Davis and Sidney Bechet met Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Boris Vian. For many jazz musicians from the USA, Paris became a place of longing beyond racial segregation and the McCarthy era. The Deutsche Oper Berlin Big Band celebrates the spirit of those years with music by Michel Legrand, Jacques Brel, Boris Vian, and Django Reinhardt.

With his self-titled new album-out May 8 on Candid Records-Grammy-winning guitarist, producer, and songwriter Matthew Stevens delivers a definitive midcareer mission statement. Long recognized as one of the most thrilling and thoughtful guitarists of his generation, Stevens has built an elite reputation in music, touring and recording with a "who's who" of modern icons, including Esperanza Spalding, Christian Scott Atunde Adjuah, Harvey Mason, and Walter Smith III. On this new release, Stevens steps fully into the spotlight, performing at the absolute peak of his powers. The music seamlessly melds acoustic and electric sonics through a mix of genre-blurring originals and deeply personal covers. The album features a multigenerational cast of musicians, including mentors like Terri Lyne Carrington, personal guitar heroes like Jeff Parker, and rising visionaries such as vibraphonist Joel Ross and vocalists Anna B Savage and Corey King. Co-produced by Stevens alongside Josh Johnson and Eric Doob, the record is the culmination of 20 years of craft. It reflects a period of profound personal and artistic change, ultimately bringing Stevens to "a place of optimism, excitement, and confidence" that signals a bold new chapter for one of jazz's most essential voices.

Gregory Hutchinson's "Kind of Now - The Pulse of Miles Davis" is a fascinating and highly rewarding album that breathes new life into some of the immortal classics from Miles Davis' repertoire, such as Charlie Parker's "Ah-Leu-Cha" or Miles' own "Seven Steps to Heaven", discounting the obvious while closing in on the deep cuts. The leader's excellent drum interludes tie this hour-long program tightly together, adding a futuristic newness that's all in Hutch's time. The overall quality and density of "Kind of Now" has everything to do with the musicians involved, a great group of young legends and lions carefully selected by the leader, just the way Miles used to do: Ambrose Akinmusire (trumpet), Ron Blake (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet), Jakob Bro (guitar), Emmanuel Michael (guitar), Gerald Clayton (piano) Joe Sanders (double bass).

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TRUMPET TALES

MUSIC OF RANDY WESTON

On Rick Braun Plays Chuck Mangione, Braun performs every track on the same Couesnon flugelhorn he played as a student at the Eastman School of Music and with the band Auracle-fitted with the cherished Giardinelli mouthpiece gifted to him by the legend himself during a meeting at the 2007 Long Beach Jazz Festival. The collection features an extraordinary roster of collaborators including original Mangione guitarist Grant Geissman, saxophonists Richard Elliot and Tom Scott, keyboardist Philippe Saisse, and flutist Steve Kujala. Vinyl will be an extremely limited pressing.

In 2005, Fr�d�ric Galliano, founder of the Frikyiwa label, decided to put it on hold for a few years. In his archives, many albums recorded during his years of travels in Africa remain unreleased. In the context of the reactivation of the Frikyiwa label, the album Lionel and St�phane Belmondo feat. K�ba K�b� Diolas Orchestra: "Calypso Diola" is therefore being released today. It was in the heart of Casamance, in the village of Bignona, that this album was recorded, in a house typical of the region, built of earth, with thick walls producing a warm acoustic open to the outside world. The idea of Fr�d�ric Galliano was to bring together the Belmondo brothers with Diola culture, renowned for it's distinctive percussion combining wood and struck metal, as well as singular instruments such as the ekontine (a four-string guitar) or Diola flutes. The vocal melodies typical of Casamance are also strong markers of this album recorded over a few days, live and in an improvisation inherent to jazz. Often composed as duos, with the exception of "Osoforal," recalling a certain 1960s jazz, the tracks of the album are marked by an artistic direction that presents the Belmondo brothers in a more stripped-down light than usual. Composed of duos or slow tempos, these tracks and their particular recording approach give this album an original colour in which each part expresses it's specificity of improvised jazz and Diola culture. Sometimes tinged with humour (Bach to Casamance or Calypso Diola) or with greater softness (Casa Sport), what is delivered here is a truly original and creative recording. It is also important to place this album in it's context: recorded in 2002, it was at the time quite unprecedented to have this kind of in situ encounter between European and African musicians. It should therefore be listened to in this specific light. It nonetheless remains both contemporary and timeless.

For almost two decades, Jeff Cascaro has been thrilling audiences at the intersection of jazz, soul, and blues. With his latest album, Broadway & Beyond, his incredibly versatile voice continues to captivate listeners. Tastefully arranged versions of standards including "Summertime," "I Got Rhythm," and "New York, New York" allow his finest vocal nuances to shine, as his warm voice shows you what there is to marvel at on Broadway and Beyond.

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RADIOHOP are a four-piece jazz/hip-hop band from Amsterdam, exploring the boundaries between groove, texture and improvisation. The bands members - Joshua Lutz (keys), Euan Jenkins (drums), Johnny Biner (guitar) and Joel Svedberg (bass) - moved to Amsterdam around 2020 to study jazz and quickly plugged into the city's bubbling scene. Each band member plays an equal role in shaping the music as a single organism, emphasising feeling and atmosphere rather than ego or individual spotlight. The compositions arise from experimentation, intuitive collaboration, and deep listening, an approach that has as much to do with their backgrounds as improvisers and beat-makers as it does with their roots in jazz. RADIOHOP have performed as the rhythm section for artists like Soul Supreme and Juju Rogers. HARD TO HANDLE is their second album and the first on Melting Pot Music. As the title suggests, RADIOHOP are going hard on this one.

3ELEMENTS: CONVERSATIONS OF HOPE