The violin is not an instrument that one readily associates with jazz. And yet it has always been part of black American music. This 2-CD set covers the 1927-1944 period and presents the best violin players in the history of jazz. Features Stephane Grappelli, Joe Venuti, Stuff Smith, Svend Asmussen, Eddie South Michel Warlop and many others. Includes a 40 page booklet with both French and English notes.

(2-CD set) "He gathers us around a gypsy campfire and takes us away from our spiritual families (what I mean is from our daily routine)..." Jean Cocteau

Gebhard Ullmann celebrates twenty years of his band Basement Research with a striking new CD. Featuring the renowned multi-instrumentalist as well as trombonist Steve Swell, saxophonist Julian Arg�elles, bassist Pascal Niggenkemper, and drummer Gerald Cleaver, the band's seventh CD showcases improvisers at the top of their game, with Ullmann's rich, dynamic compositions.

Christy Doran's bands are called "New Bag," "Sound Fountain," or "Bunter Hund," and the same thing applies to all of them: nomen est omen. He chooses his co-musicians exclusively according to the pleasure principle, and does not know any prejudices not only in this respect, but has played with Fredy Studer, Urs Leimgruber, Carla Bley, Ray Anderson, Erika Stucky, and many more. He regularly jumps back and forth between Jimi Hendrix, Samuel Becket, and Chinese folk music in the search for inspiration and seems to expand his artistic portfolio every second. Christy Doran, for this release, got the idea to bundle 20 electric guitars, four electric basses and a drumset into an orchestra that has never before existed in this form. He calls it "144 Strings for a Broken Chord" in view of the tempestuous storm that it creates. One has to listen to this sometimes brutal elemental force, which can change into a soft hovering in a matter of seconds, a vacuum of reverberating sound fragments. And note: Each of the 20 guitarists and four bassists brings his own personal touch to the daring project, creating a special, original sound that resembles an artistic DNA with the help of smaller or larger instruments.

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Susheela Raman's voice, whether solo or in unearthly harmonies, performs it's unique magic drawing the musical world together. With it's bold meddling with tune and tempo, this fresh set of songs threatens not to work but achieves a compelling integrity. Susheela Raman's Ghost Gamelan is a rich new landscape unlike any of her previous work and quite unlike anything else. Born in London to South Indian parents, singer Susheela Raman, alongside producer/guitarist Sam Mills, has released a chain of adventurous albums and is known as an intense, captivating live performer. Spirited encounters with musicians from a wide range of backgrounds has been a hallmark of her work. Now a new ambitious collaboration with Indonesian musicians is bearing fruit. Raman has delivered this extraordinary album, the body of which was recorded in Solo, Indonesia in 2016. The album is a collaboration with Javanese contemporary gamelan composer Gondrong Guanarto and his team of virtuoso gamelan players. Gamelan, for non-initiates, is the music of Bali and Java, played mostly on tuned gongs, which has long inspired smart western music makers from Debussy, Messaien, Philip Glass and Steve Reich to Sonic Youth. Traces of it's shimmering, loopy DNA are over everything from modal jazz to electronic dance music.

Jazz Cats 1

(2-CD set) “And then he came on, already smiling, ‘cause he was really nice. He had a big smile with beautiful white teeth and a beautiful black moustache and he smiled at the audience. He came to play a bit. And what he gave was real music.” Fud CANDRIX. Includes a 40 page booklet with both French and English notes.

(2-CD set) "His name may not loom large, but he has left his indelible mark on the century". Includes a 16 page booklet with both French and English notes.

Elder

2014 debut album from the German Jazz saxophonist and his quintet.

(2-CD set) "God is in the house tonight" Fats WALLER. Includes a 24 page booklet with both French and English notes.

(2-CD set) “What musically moves me the most ? There’s Ravel’s Valses Nobles et Sentimentales (...). I can’t forget Bach’s Toccata and Fugue where the music reaches my heart and makes me cry. Debussy is maybe the closest to my musical ideal as in him I can find the sensitivity and intelligence that I demand from all music”. Django REINHARDT. Includes a 40 page booklet with both French and English notes.

 Ámbar, the fifth studio album from Chilean-born talent Camila Meza, showcases the multitalented vocalist, guitarist and composer's ever-evolving artistic sensibility. Accompanied by the Nectar Orchestra, frequent collaborator Noam Wiesenberg, pianist/keyboardist Eden Ladin, drummer/percussionist Keita Ogawa, violinists Tomoko Omura and Fung Chern Hwei, violist Benjamin von Gutzeit and cellist Brian Sanders, Meza reaches new virtuosic and expressive heights as a singer, a stirring guitar soloist, an ambitious songwriter and a producer. Distinguished by it's extraordinarily close attention to sonic detail, Ámbar is Meza's boldest artistic statement to date. Steeped in metaphor, romance and complex emotion, Ámbar is a breakthrough, rooted in the incredible agility and interplay of Meza's state-of-the-art jazz group.

Ensemble 5o Elemento was formed by Mexican musicians who came together to explore jazz and all it's rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic facets. Their repertoire covers a broad spectrum, from jazz classics of the sixties a la Miles Davis, to contemporary jazz works inspired by Spanish influences. Most of the pieces they play are composed by the members themselves. The present release is presented in honor of the group's 20th anniversary and features a programme of Mexican jazz.

(2-CD set) Hawk took his hat off to no one. Includes a 16 page booklet with both French and English notes.

Many Ways

Since moving to Germany, Shannon Barnett has become very active in the local scene. Her quartet, featuring Stefan Karl Schmid (tenor saxophone), David Helm (bass) and Fabian Arends (drums) was nominated as a semi-finalist in the 2017 Neuer Deutscher Jazzpreis. They have performed widely in Germany, including at the Acht Brucken and Winterjazz Festivals, the Peng Festival and IG Jazz in Mannheim. In 2016, they toured Australia, performing at th eWangaratta Festival of Jazz and Sydney Women's Jazz Festival. This is the ensemble's debut album.

Nucleus

Although this trio has been together since 2007, this is only their third album. It's predecessor Two Lost Churches triggered an extraordinary response in the international press, and this new one will certainly surpass that!

The Next Level

Constantly Moving - Next Generation, Vol. 14

Mysterious

Classical Music

Markus Burger writes of his new release: "Since I was a child, I have loved the outdoors and fell in love with the vast wilderness of Alaska and Iceland. In 2000 I visited Iceland for the first time and wrote most of the songs for my solo piano release Ultreya which came out in 2001 on Jazzline Records. It took me until 2002 to go to Alaska and visit Valdez and the Kenai Peninsula. I was blown away by the beauty of Alaska and the uniqueness of the folks that live there. Through my affiliation with Idyllwild's Jazz Academy director Marshall Hawkins, one of the finest bassists on the West coast and a great Jazz Educator, I was fortunate enough to start teaching for a few semesters in Homer Alaska. In 2015 and 2016 I got to visit Kodiak Island, which left a lifetime impression on me. The songs on this album were written in Alaska over the years of my trips to this wilderness state. When planning this album's recording session, I asked Bob Magnusson to play bass, because we share the love of musical elegance and simplicity- and because I truly love Bob's bass sound (like so many others before me). I have admired Peter Erskine since I first heard him perform with his ECM Trio featuring John Taylor and Palle Danielsson. I love his playing and his compositions and I was thrilled when he agreed to be part of this musical project... Jim Linahon has been the sound wizard behind all of my albums for Challenge Records and he is in my humble opinion one of the finest engineers and producers for Jazz in the U.S. today. He was delighted that Microtech Gefell and DPA send him their fienst microphones to capture every nuance of our trio's playing... "

Classical Music