Bud Powell was “the foundation out of which stemmed the whole edifice of modern jazz piano" (Herbie Hancock) and “the greatest be-bop piano player in the world “ (Hampton Hawes). Though his life was short and troubled (1924 – 1966), Bud found some solace and tranquillity during the years (1959 – 1963) he lived in Europe (mostly in Paris). The recordings that make up this album are from March and August of 1962 from Danish Radio Concert Hall and Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen. However battered mentally and physically the man was, here’s the clear evidence of his genius more intact than generally believed.

2022 release. Simply put, Samara Joy is next. At just 22 years old, her Verve debut Linger Awhile shows that with a voice, tone, and phrasing that harkens back to the most legendary jazz vocalists, Samara belongs in the company of iconic labelmates from Ella Fitzgerald to Sarah Vaughan to Billie Holiday. Samara is remarkably savvy on TikTok and Instagram, fostering a community of devoted followers through fully organic means. She is poised to be a household name, synonymous with timeless jazz music.

Johnny “Little Giant” Griffin moved to France in 1963 leaving USA where the straight-ahead jazz’s heyday was fast waning. Together with other expatriates such as Dexter Gordon, Bud Powell, Kenny Clarke Griffin had highly productive career in Europe. The original version of this 180G LP was recorded live over two nights in 1973 at Copenhagen’s jazzhus Montmartre. “...this is a superb Griffin recording in a long time...” (Swing Journal) “Johnny Griffin in the 1970s remains The Little Giant - a joy to hear and this must be his most representative album in ages...” (Coda) 180g Audiophile Vinyl

The magic of art needs a frame, a somewhat solid container to hold the freedom that can only be found once we integrate some form of structure. And that also holds in every other area of life. We all need a frame, a structure, a rhythm, or else, we fall apart. This human form needs the body, and yet it transcends the limitations of the body - through art.

Renowned Russian jazz pianist Ivan Farmakovskiy makes his highly anticipated debut on SteepleChase Records with a stunning new album. Blending his signature hard-bop style with modern jazz sensibilities, Farmakovskiy delivers a masterful performance that bridges tradition and innovation with American rhythm section of Christian McBride and Jack DeJohnette. Ivan won the 1994 bi-annual Russia Jazz Competition, the biggest contest for young Russian performers and he won another prize at the 1997 Europe Jazz Contest in Belgium.

For his debut leader project on SteepleChase, Bollenback chose a bold and distinct approach, opting for a guitar and bass duo format. Teaming up with bassist Boris Kozlov, a three-time Grammy winner. Bollenback explores new musical territories with a mix of original compositions by Bollenback and Kozlov, along with jazz standards that highlight their exceptional musical connection and rhythmic synergy. Renowned for his versatility and dynamism on the guitar, Bollenback's unique approach to jazz and blues has earned him accolades from legends like George Benson, who praised him as a "versatile dynamo on guitar." Over the years, Bollenback has collaborated with numerous jazz greats, including organist Joey DeFrancesco, appearing on nineteen of his albums and earning a Grammy nomination for co-producing 2011's Never Can Say Goodbye.

Originally released in 1979 and reissued on CD in 1996 with bonus material, G1128 stands as a vibrant snapshot of two masterful trumpeters—John McNeil and Tom Harrell—at a pivotal moment in modern jazz. Now, for the first time, this landmark session returns in stunning 24bit/96kHz remastered fidelity on heavyweight 180g vinyl, preserving the warmth and swing of the original analog tapes. Backed by a stellar rhythm section featuring Kenny Barron (piano), Buster Williams (bass), and Billy Hart (drums), McNeil and Harrell engage in a spirited, lyrical dialogue that’s as respectful of tradition as it is forward-looking. Their interplay is marked by mutual admiration rather than rivalry—Harrell’s bright, unflappable tone contrasts beautifully with McNeil’s introspective, saxophone-inspired phrasing. For audiophiles, collectors, and jazz devotees alike, this is not just a reissue—it’s a rediscovery. “...it’s never a duel of trumpets here but it’s the duet of trumpets... When the two trumpeters share technique and inspiration, one cannot but enjoy the inevitable result...” (Alain Tercinet, JAZZ HOT).

Guitarist John Hart returns to the classic guitar-bass-drums trio format for his seventh SteepleChase release. After several adventurous outings, New Mantra marks a melodic homecoming, reuniting Hart with longtime collaborators Bill Moring and Tim Horner. Known for his lyrical phrasing and harmonic depth, Hart emphasizes melody and clarity, crafting originals like “Think” and “Abyss” alongside fresh takes on standards such as “Stella by Starlight” and “Some Other Time.” With over 100 sideman credits and decades of leadership, Hart continues to shape modern jazz guitar — blending tradition, intellect, and soul in every note. “Resonance resonates…and how. Mucho bravos to John Hart and his bandmates for providing jazz guitar fans with a refreshing and inspired offering which exhibits the time-honoured legacy of the instrument.” (UK JazzNews on SCCD 31948 Resonance)

Saxophonist Sigurdur Flosason has been one of Icelands most active jazz musicians for the past decades. Through out his career he's cooperated with some of Scandinavia's finest musicians. On his latest release, Blue shoes, his partners are Danes Kjeld Lauritsen on Hammond organ and Kristian Leth on drums, both of whom he has cooperated with on previous releases. New to the mix is the outstanding Swedish guitarist Erik Soderlind. On a few tracks they are joined by Danish percussion master Birger Sulsbruck. The music, all Flosason's originals, is a cross between jazz and blues with a personal and nordic twist. The album was recorded at Village recording in Copenhagen during the summer of 2025. Sigurdur Flosason has recorded over thirty CDs and is a multiple winner of the Icelandic music awards.

2020 release. Pianist Gerald Clayton makes his Blue Note debut with Happening: Live At The Village Vanguard. An example of musical gambles taken on stage, the exceptional quintet (tenor sax-Walter Smith III, bassist-Joe Sanders, drummer-Marcus Gilmore) deliver dynamic performances at NYC's legendary Village Vanguard. With four Clayton originals and Billy Strayhorn's "Take the Coltrane". He then pares down to a trio for the lively version of Bud Powell's "Celia" and a stunning rendition of "Body and Soul".

If you like your jazz with a heaping helping of swirling, wondrous rhythm, Samba de Maracatu by the legendary Joe Chambers will fill you up. Be it on drums, percussion or mallets, Chambers has been one of the great sidemen in jazz history, providing the beat for everyone from Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson and Sam Rivers to Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson and Chet Baker … just to scratch the surface. He’s also had a diverse and incredible career as a leader. - DownBeat Magazine

Click here to read the full review at DownBeat Magazine

2020 release. Blue Note debut by cornetist and composer Ron Miles, this is the follow-up to his widely acclaimed 2017 album I Am A Man, featuring the same remarkable collaborations. Miles wrote most of the music in Summer 2018 as his father was passing away; it's both a loving dedication and a riveting spiritual document that scores the journey from Earth to eternal peace. "Rainbows deal with renewal. Sometimes, our limitations can inform what we can see."

Andre Previn - Early Years 1945-53 / Among his remarkable musical accomplishments, he was a brilliant pianist, and even at this early stage of his career - Andre Previn was a celebrated German/American pianist, composer and conductor, whose long career - he died in 2019 at the age of 89 - encompassed movie music, jazz and classical music. He composed or arranged music for more than 50 films, and was music al director and conductor for many top symphony orchestra as well as composing classical art music. This collection focuses on his early career as a jazz pianist. His family, who were Jewish, left Berlin for Paris and then the USA in 1938, and when he graduated from high school in Los Angeles in 1946, started working at MGM studios. However, by then he was already playing jazz piano in Hollywood clubs and had made his first records. This 66-track 3-CD collection comprises most of his recordings from these early years as a solo pianist, with small groups and with strings, released on the Sunset, V-Disc, Monarch, RCA-Victor and Tops labels. It includes the titles from his "Andre Previn Plays George Gershwin" and "Andre Previn Plays Fats Waller" albums. He was especially noted for his recordings with his trios, and this set features trio and quartet recordings with Irving Ashby, Red Callender, Lee Young, Al Viola, Charles Parnell, Jackie Mills, Bob Bain, Ralph Collier, Lloyd Pratt, Art Shapiro, Irv Cottler, Al Hendrickson Buddy Clark and Shelly Manne. Among his remarkable musical accomplishments, he was a brilliant pianist, and even at this early stage of his career, his playing is fast, fluent and imaginative, and this collection offers a fine showcase for those talents.

Born in Mississippi in 1915, Al Hibbler, who was blind from birth, was a baritone vocalist whose career transcended the divide between big band jazz, rhythm and blues and sophisticated pop. Starting with the band of Jay McShann, he became the vocalist with Duke Ellington's orchestra in 1943, recording memorable hits with him and staying with Ellington until 1951, but along the way also forging a career as a solo recording artist, enjoying a string of R&B and pop hits, both in the USA and the UK. This 75-track 3-CD set comprises most of his A and B sides on the Aladdin, Sunrise/Miracle, Chess, Atlantic, Mercury/Clef/Norgran and Decca labels during this era. It includes all his career chart entries, most notably his US No. 3, R&B No. 1 and UK No. 2 in 1955 with "Unchained Melody" and his US pop Top 10 hits with "He" and "After The Lights Go Down Low", plus Top 10 R&B hits with "Trees", "Lover Come Back To Me", "Danny Boy" and "What Will I Tell My Heart". It includes a couple of fine recordings with the Count Basie Orchestra. Al Hibbler occupies a unique place in American popular music, and this substantial and comprehensive overview of his primary career as a chart-focused artist provides an enjoyable showcase for his smooth and distinctive vocal style.

Trumpeter and bandleader Harry James was one of the most important, successful and influential personalities of the swing and big band era, his unmistakeable bravura trumpet style providing an inspiration and benchmark for trumpeters across the jazz and orchestral genres. He was hugely popular on radio, as a 'live' attraction and on record with his music not only appealing to cutting edge jazz and big band enthusiasts, but also, through his recordings of "sweeter" orchestral material, featuring the many male and female vocalists who launched their careers with his bands, capturing a wider audience to achieve a remarkable string of big-selling hits from his debut as a bandleader in the late '30s right through into the 1950's just before the dawn of the rock 'n' roll era. This great-value 71-track 3-CD set comprises just about all his records which featured in one form or another of the charts during his career, including the few that were listed as being Top 10 hits before the launch of the record sales charts in Billboard in 1940, and those which featured thereafter in one or other of the published Billboard charts or related listings. It naturally includes his No. 1 hits "Sleepy Lagoon", "I Had The Craziest Dream", "I've Heard That Song Before", "I'll Get By", "I'm Beginning to See the Light" and "It's Been a Long, Long Time". Among the featured vocalists are Frank Sinatra, Dick Haymes, Helen Forrest, Kitty Kallen, Johnny McAfee, Buddy DeVito, Betty Grable, Willie Smith, Ginnie Powell, Marion Morgan, Art Lund and Dick Williams, and it also includes Harry's 1950s hits with Doris Day and Rosemary Clooney. It's a hugely entertaining overview of the commercially successful output of one of the great stylists and innovators of the big band era.

In 1958, the first issue of a new magazine named Jazz Review contained an essay by musicologist Gunther Schuller, titled "Sonny Rollins and Thematic Improvisation". The piece's premise was simple - to examine a single Rollins' solo on a recording called Blue 7 (heard on the saxophonist's iconic 1956 LP Saxophone Colossus), whose title gave away the basic structure of the performance - that of the back-bone of jazz, the twelve bar blues. Rollins was already one of the most talked-of jazzmen of his generation, seen by many as a genuine heir to Bebop's founding father Charlie Parker, but Schuller's painstaking analysis elevated him further still, to the rank of innovator whose blues improvisations had a level of compositional cogency of one "who spends days or weeks writing a given passage". Rollins, Schuller believed, had provided a defining example of the art of jazz. Yet, like all good critics, he was aware that such a performance didn't come out of nowhere. Although Blue 7 was undoubtedly a high spot, it was a peak that dominated a landscape littered with other such achievements. Indeed, it was just the latest in a series of classic blues solos Rollins had been setting down on record with his own groups and those led by others since the early 1950s. This new collection collates a selection of those great performances - the first ever issue to concentrate solely on Rollins; blues specialist. Well-regarded for his musical wit and penchant for oddball song choices, since Blue 7 remarkably little has been written about the great saxophonist's ability to wring pure invention from the most fundamental format in jazz, yet the blues (part of his artistic DNA since his days as a teenage Louis Jordan fan) has been at the back of all Rollins' stylistic shifts over a sixty year career. Packaged with period photographs and a fascinating booklet note by saxophonist Simon Spillett, this anthology charts a course through some of his greatest musical encounters - with other giants like Dizzy, Miles, Coltrane and Monk - as well as documenting his never-ending quest for the most stimulating of instrumental contexts. There are pianoless trios, a series of classy quartets and quintets and one especially memorable session, a two-piano sextet. Whatever the setting though, and whatever the tempo (which ranges from a roar through Sonnymoon For Two to the slow purr of Sumphin'), this is Sonny Rollins proving time and again that the blues is at the very core of his immense contribution to the music. Number of Discs: 2

Trinity Represents The Second Installation In The Unheard Music Series Efforts To Resurrect Joe Mcphee's Early '70's Work On The Cjr Label, Soon To Be Completed With Underground Railroad And Pieces Of Light. This Brilliant Trio Recording Of Blues Inflected Out-Soul From '73 Follows Up On Hugely Successful Nation Time, Recorded A Year Later.

Big Chief Donald Harrison Jr. Is one of finest saxophonists of his generation. His resume includes long associations with Terrance Blanchard and Art Blakey throughout the 1980s. But the foundation of Harrison's music, and it's the soul of his music, comes from his lifelong participation in the culture of New Orleans, his home town. Here he pays tribute to that rich culture, and accompanied by non other than the legendary Dr. John. Both artists, the embodiment of New Orleans' music in their own right. The album features a mix of original compositions and jazz standards, all infused with the spirit and energy of New Orleans. Featuring the Mardi Gras Indian chants of The Guardians Of The Flame, this recording captures the magic of heritage New Orleans Mardi Gras music and wraps it all up in one package. Originally recorded at BMG Studios in New York City, May of 1991. Remastered by Bernie Grumman.

Keiko Matsui is an icon of contemporary jazz. With over 3 million units sold and sold-out appearances at concert halls across the globe, she is one of the most recognized artists in the genre. Her elegant piano melodies and gentle jazz grooves have enormous appeal and never disappoint the loyal fan base which she has cultivated with over a dozen albums and hundreds of stunning live shows! Euphoria, Keiko's most inspired release yet, elevates the artist to new heights. Featuring a full string orchestra and horn ensemble, performances that transcend musical genres and stellar, Grammy-winning special guests, Euphoria transcends musical genres while still maintaining Keiko's classic listener-friendly sound! Highlights include the beautiful "Steps On The Globe," Keiko's passionate collaboration with R&B icon Lalah Hathaway "Love and Nothing Else," the deeply moving "New Passage" and many more superb originals.

Limited digitally remastered edition. Special package includes CD polycarbonate disc (CD vinyl-replica) with original record label, OBI strip, single cardboard jacket and printed inner sleeve. Preach Brother! Is an album by American saxophonist Don Wilkerson recorded in 1962 and released on the Blue Note label.

Channeling the linear rhythmic energy of Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, the reflective harmonic spirit of Keith Jarrett and Bill Evans, and the romantic spirit of Latin music, pianist Edward Simon presents a comprehensive portrait of his unique musical concept on his first trio album since 1995. Simon is accompanied by the great John Patitucci (Waynte Shorter's bassist) and drummer Eric Harland.

2-CD Set Limited Edition - Includes 16-page booklet. This release contains Jimmy Smith's complete classic Sermon sessions for the first time ever on a single set. These are his only preserved collaborations with Lee Morgan, the formidable trumpet player whose life came to a tragic end after being shot by his girlfriend at the tender age of 33. Tenor saxophonist Tina Brooks is also well featured here. The outstanding reedman would pass away at the age of 42 after a life of drug addiction and self abuse. 2 COMPLETE ALBUMS & MORE - 2-CD SET - CD1/TT: 73:17 CD2/TT: 72:14 - LIMITED EDITION - INCLUDES 16-PAGE BOOKLET