This release in a series of live recordings of concerts from the Fabrik in Hamburg-Altona, one of those hidden treasures from the archive of the NDR, was intended to bring back the memory of changes and revolutions in the world of jazz of more than four decades ago. It has now turned into an obituary - at the end of September 2022 the tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders passed away at the age of 81. This recording of the Sanders Quartet from 6 June 1980 is so far the oldest from the Fabrik, predating the great jazz-epoch of the venue. An era, which even today Thomas Engel, the first program planner of the Fabrik, describes as a very special period for popular and not-so-popular culture in Hamburg and far beyond. Furthermore, this concert formed part of the then fifth edition of what was still called the New Jazz Festival, a summit of German, European and US-American musicians. Only thanks to the NDR Bigband, top-class jazz was performed at the old industrial site on Barnerstrasse in Altona at all. In the mid-1970s, the band was brave enough to leave it's familiar recording studio and perform rousing concerts at the Fabrik. Since 1976, the New Jazz Festival organised by Wolfgang Kunert, the program planner of the big band, institutionalised jazz music at this exceptional location.

Vinyl LP pressing. This musician is simultaneously world-famous and unknown. The label Atlantic periodically re-released the recording of a very special concert he took part in and everybody who is somehow interested in jazz, even if only on it's fringes, most probably has listened to at least one of the numbers performed by the saxophonist Eddie Harris. On 21 June 1969, he met with singer and pianist Les McCann on stage of the old casino of Montreux to unleash what can only be described as a firework of music, hardly ever experienced by the jazz community before. Situated somewhere between jazz, funk and soul, McCann and Eddie Harris actually create (this is no exaggeration!) something like a new style; and Compared to what, Les McCann´s spectacular song oscillating between black consciousness and the civil rights rhetoric, became the hymn of this movement.

October 18, 1987 was a very special day for the two brothers Michael Brecker & Randy Brecker. For years both had conquered the stages of the world together with their band Brecker Brothers and earned the reputation of being among the world's leading jazz musicians on their instruments, the saxophone and the trumpet.

October 18, 1987 was a very special day for the two brothers Michael Brecker & Randy Brecker. For years both had conquered the stages of the world together with their band Brecker Brothers and earned the reputation of being among the world's leading jazz musicians on their instruments, the saxophone and the trumpet.

Live At Fabrik Hamburg 1986 (180gr./triple-gatefold) By the 1980's, Gil Evans Orchestra's repertoire was a distinctive blend of Hendrix tunes, original pieces from band members and the occasional nod to Gil's earlier recordings. The set at Hamburg includes four songs from the Hendrix book, although just one of these ("Up From The Skies") was part of the original studio album. Regular appearances in Europe meant that the band had now acquired a younger following, such as many in the audience at Fabrik, one well accustomed to it's rock-referent concerts. A year and a half after the concert at Fabrik, Gil Evans passed away in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Quite rightly he'll always be remembered for recording those brilliant, luminous albums with Miles Davis and under his own name, but he had, in fact, led at least three contrasting musical lives. His final years saw him directing his band at a regular Monday night gig at Sweet Basil, New York, so it's fitting that we now have this recording from Hamburg, one that serves as a memorial to his free-spirited later days. With an All Star Musicians Cast.

By the 1980's, Gil Evans Orchestra's repertoire was a distinctive blend of Hendrix tunes, original pieces from band members and the occasional nod to Gil's earlier recordings. The set at Hamburg includes four songs from the Hendrix book, although just one of these ("Up From The Skies") was part of the original studio album. Regular appearances in Europe meant that the band had now acquired a younger following, such as many in the audience at Fabrik, one well accustomed to it's rock-referent concerts. A year and a half after the concert at Fabrik, Gil Evans passed away in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Quite rightly he'll always be remembered for recording those brilliant, luminous albums with Miles Davis and under his own name, but he had, in fact, led at least three contrasting musical lives. His final years saw him directing his band at a regular Monday night gig at Sweet Basil, New York, so it's fitting that we now have this recording from Hamburg, one that serves as a memorial to his free-spirited later days. With an All Star Musicians Cast.

Racism and disdain for improvised music in the "motherland of jazz" drove more and more Americans to Europe in the 1950s and 1960s. Bud Powell, Kenny Clarke and Oskar Pettiford, who had already contributed to the development of bebop in the early 1940s, appear here on the occasion of the Jazztage in Essen in 1960, and the saxophonist Coleman Hawkins joined them in the second half of the concert.