A complete, previously unreleased performance in brilliant stereo sound quality by the legendary Bill Evans Trio. Audio transferred from the original stereo tape reels and mastered by Matthew Lutthans at the Mastering Lab. Recently found in the Kongsberg Jazz Festival archives, it was widely believed that this concert had not been recorded, and as such it doesn't appear on any of the Bill Evans discographies! Featuring Eddie Gomez on bass and Marty Morell on drums.
This previously unreleased recording features the remaining music from the legendary concert that produced Lowe's ESP-Disk's debut as a leader, Black Beings. This recording features Art Ensemble of Chicago saxophonist Joseph Jarman in perhaps his first New York appearance, with the future Cecil Taylor bass and drum team of William Parker and Rashid Sinan and violinist Raymond Lee Cheng (The Wizard) on his only known recording. High energy music in it's purest form.
Berger & Holland were two of the first Europeans to find musical homes for themselves deep in American free jazz, and these improvised duets from 1976 show just how comfortable they were. Berger plays piano, vibraphone & balafon, while Holland plays bass. The compositions are tonal, and as the title insists, it's all about time. It's roots go deep, all the way to Africa, and the overlapping of rhythms suggest the minimalism of Reich, Riley & Glass. Berger's forte is rhythmic dialogue, and the subtle time shifts that are often a music's undercurrent are fore-grounded here.
Fast-growing jazz star Evan Christopher brings back the sound of great jazz and swing a la Edmond Hall on this release recorded in 1998. The clarinetist is joined by John Sheridan, Howard Elkins, Don Mopsick, Ed Torres, Jim Cullum and Sebastian Campesi. (Previously deleted:10/1/09. Original release date:12/6/02)
Music has a long history of cultural cross-pollination, where artists draw inspiration from various traditions leading to the evolution of rich and diverse musical genres. Conrad Herwig's current offering is just such a recording. The Latin Side of McCoy Tyner is the latest installment in a critically-acclaimed series that started in 1996 with The Latin Side of John Coltrane. It's the work of a musically gifted, bilingual artist, a master trombonist who grew up admiring jazz's greatest practitioners but, at the same time, cutting his Latin Jazz teeth with legends such as Mario Bauza, Tito Puente, Paquito D'Rivera and others. On the gig here with Herwig, giving the recording and, by extension, the entire "Latin Side of..." project his personal seal of approval, is the great pianist and composer, Eddie Palmieri. Palmieri is surrounded by some of the most respected names in Jazz / Latin Jazz, including Craig Handy, Bill O'Connell, Alex Norris, Robby Ameen and others, all playing imaginative and challenging arrangements by O'Connell and their fearless leader. Here, Conrad Herwig goes directly to the very core of Tyner's compositions and imbues them with the vibrant essence of Afro-Cuban and Afro-Caribbean traditions.
This compilation traces the genre's early days in the recording studio. It includes a reissue of the Victor Talking Machine Company's first piano ragtime disc in 1916, as well as several performances of English ragtime. These sides portray the piano in an era when recording technology struggled to capture the instrument's full range.
As it did with blues and jazz, the early recording industry missed the beginnings of ragtime. Luckily, the burgeoning player piano industry produced ragtime tunes on paper rolls, and these rolls augment the recordings we have. This collection presents ragtime played on piano rolls as well as on instruments like the banjo, which were suitable for early recording processes.
These kings of stride have got rhythm! The immortal Fats Waller and his Rhythm get together with Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden in a radio broadcast recorded live at Martin Block's Make Believe Ballroom in October 1938, while father of the stride piano and Waller's teacher James P. Johnson brings Omer Simeon and Pops Foster in to play with his trio.
Jazz trombonist Joseph Bowie was 22 years young when this live album was recorded. It was his second album and he was establishing his own name, his brother Lester Bowie was already internationally renowned. Shortly after Joseph would form Defunkt. Co-leader Oliver Lake also heralded from BAG, the St. Louis music collective. The extraordinary flutist/saxophonist would co-found The World Saxophone Quartet the year following this Toronto concert. "What Bowie and Lake played was an impassioned and demanding music of the moment that responded as much to what was written on their lead sheets or to their spontaneous concepts as it did to the ambiance of the moment." - Coda Magazine, June 1976
Jacques Schwarz-Bart has been at the center of several musical revolutions: Neo Soul next to D'angelo and Erika Badu, New Jazz as a founding member of Roy Hargrove's RH Factor, and he is a leading pioneer in the creation of two surging new styles: Gwoka Jazz, and Voodoo jazz, reuniting jazz music with it's Afro-Caribbean and spiritual origins. Jacques' impressionistic writing, powerful tone, and wide-ranging language - both lyrical and angular - have fueled a growing presence on the world stage.
On the 40th anniversary of the death of the great John Coltrane, we celebrate his life, with a collection of two blazing Newport Jazz Festival performances recorded for Impulse. While both sets have previously been issued on various separate releases, they're now together for the first time with the addition of newly discovered, previously unreleased material.
The Found Tapes: Live in Los Angeles is a 3 CD set from Tribe Records co-founder Phil Ranelin, celebrating a trio of LA club performances from 1978-1981 which remain especially significant to the visionary trombonist. Backed by a young Billy Childs on piano, Ralph Penland on drums, and Tony Dumas on bass, Ranelin was in peak form as a player and bandleader during this period. This is particularly true of one specific outing at the now shuttered Maiden Voyage in Los Angeles on July 19, 1981, which is presented in full within this set. The audio was restored from decades old cassette tapes which have never been heard until now. A master trombonist of the J.J. Johnson tradition, Ranelin's career has spanned over five decades with eleven records as a solo artist, four as a Freddie Hubbard sideman, session recordings for Motown, and work with artists ranging from Stevie Wonder and Ella Fitzgerald to Red Hot Chili Peppers and Telefon Tel Aviv.
To paraphrase the old stock brokerage commercial: "When Anthony Braxton plays, people listen". And they have been doing so for decades, through dozens of recordings spanning an evolution that is remarkable for it's independence and virtuosity. Braxton's first two albums, "Three Compositions of New Jazz" (1968, DMK #415) and "For Alto" (1969, DMK #420) were released on Delmark, and it's only fitting that the present rare quartet version of his self-described "Ghost Trance Music" be released more than thirty years later on the same label. Features Anthony Braxton on woodwinds, Kevin Uehlinger on piano/melodica, Keith Witty on bass, and Noam Schatz on percussion.
Duke Ellington's 'The Feeling of Jazz' from Black Lion Records, remastered for the first time in decades by legendary engineer, Bernie Grundman. Performed by the 1962 Duke Ellington Orchestra featuring: Cat Anderson, Harold Baker, Aaron Bell, Bill Berry, Lawrence Brown, Roy Burrows, Harry Carney, Chuck Conners, Buster Cooper, Leon Cox, Paul Gonsalves, Jimmy Hamilton, Johnny Hodges, Ray Nance, Russell Procope, and Sam Woodyard.
Redefining the collective concept in an ensemble, Two Cities is the follow up to the 2006 release Ready Everyday (DMK 571). The Fast Citizens have a rotating leader chair. This time Aram Shelton has taken the reins as main composer, focusing on orchestration and structural variety to present a stylistically diverse album that includes hard swing, lush ballads, high-energy free improvisation, modern composition and Sun-Ra-inspired grooves. Aram Shelton, alto saxophone, clarinet; Keefe Jackson, tenor saxophone, bass clarinet; Josh Berman, cornet; Fred Lonberg-Holm, cello; Anton Hatwich, bass; and Frank Rosaly, drums. Nine new compositions.
Chicago Hot (DMK 253), the first Delmark release from The Fat Babies, was chosen as a top ten album of 2012 by Howard Reich in the Chicago Tribune. 18th & Racine was recorded at the acoustically gifted Electrical Audio room B as the band swung through a smattering of hot 'n' sweet tunes that have been slaying crowds weekly at their Green Mill and Honky Tonk BBQ performances. The Fat Babies interpret classic styles of the '20s and '30s. Founded in 2010 by string bass player Beau Sample, it's members include Andy Schumm, cornet; John Otto, reeds; Dave Bock, trombone; Jake Sanders, banjo and guitar; Paul Asaro, piano; Alex Hall, drums.
BRIGHT LIGHT IN WINTER is the long-awaited third album by Chicago guitarist Jeff Parker. With his associates Chris Lopes (bass) and Chad Taylor (drums), this trio continues their examination of our post-modern musical universe via tuneful compositions by all three members, and an elastic, dynamic approach to improvisation and group interplay - rooted in our familiar musical traditions, but also searching for the new ones. Recorded and mixed by Bundy K. Brown. Also available: Jeff Parker, Like-Coping (DMK 543). "Jeff Parker is arguably the most exciting and thoughtful jazz guitarist of the past two decades, a masterful free improviser who's also fluent in everything from postbop to post rock." - Chicago Reader.
His playing was rich, masterful and above all, versatile, covering everything from stride and ragtime to bebop and free jazz. Pianist, saxophonist, composer, arranger, and teacher Jaki Byard had a career that followed the music and along the way he became a master of every style of jazz. Nowhere was his imagination quite as unbridled as it was in solo performance and HighNote Records is pleased to release this second volume of Jaki Byard live at the famed Keystone Korner.
Ode To O is the second release of the Ogjb Quartet, a cooperative group that features four longstanding leaders in modern improvised music, saxophonist Oliver Lake, cornetist Graham Haynes, bassist Joe Fonda and drummer Barry Altschul. Each group member is a composer in his own right and a master on his chosen instrument. The new release, which follows the highly acclaimed Bamako (TUM CD 050) released in 2019, again features compositions contributed by each of the group's members as well as two collective improvisations. The album is named after Barry Altschul's composition dedicated to the late Ornette Coleman.
