Wonderful compositions, plus previously unissued bonus tracks, featuring Oscar Pettiford on bass and vocalists Joya Sherrill, Kay Davis, Betty Roche, and Al Hibbler + the Mellotones.

Here are more precious wartime broadcasts that Duke made for the U.S. Treasury Department, these dating from October 13 and 20, 1945. You don't have to buy the war bonds, but you will treasure these: Take the 'A' Train; Autumn Serenade; I'll Buy That Dream; Mood Indigo; After All; C-Jam Blues; Perdido; Caravan; If I Loved You; Ko-Ko 51 tracks on 2 CDs!

Classical Music

The eleventh double-CD in this special D.E.T.S. (Duke Ellington Treasury Series) program continues the reissue of all of Ellington.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

To begin a CD with an unaccompanied intro to a ballad indicates some confidence from the main soloist on this excellent double CD with the young talented American pianist Christian Sands in the company of the two Danes bass player Thomas Fonnesbæk who is said to be the next NHØP and a Montmartre legend the drummer Alex Riel. The music is recorded live in Jazzhus Montmartre, Copenhagen in October 2014. The three musicians had never met before, but already on the first evening they found their common beat and developed it through the next two concerts, which naturally led to the best takes being collected for this double CD.

Classical Music

Heine Hansen’s piano is playful, even bubbling and almost singing, like an early bird in the first days of spring. On his long awaited debut album, Hansen unfolds his signature sound on eleven new compositions of his own. Until now, he was best known as a sideman – modest, but highly respected as an elegant accompanist. In all probability Denmark’s most ethereal, swinging jazz pianist. A signature is something so personal it can’t be replicated; Heine Hansen plays the piano with a unique sense for applying rhythm and melody. With Thomas Fonnesbæk on bass and Alex Riel on drums, a truly beautiful symbiosis of eloquent melodies and precise playfulness emerges like rays of sunshine finding their way through green leaves. Music critic Christan Munch-Hansen writes: “Grooves in shades of green. Fresh and light-hearted – yet with the melancholy of autumn and winter beneath the surface, encoded in the weave. Small bittersweet melodies and impressionistic touches. Brief references to jazz history as well as the tonality of Scandinavian and European music.” Heine Hansen is a talent in his own league: This spring, he was awarded the Ben Webster Award of 2016. Heine Hansen will be performing with Riel and Fonnesbæk during Copenhagen Jazz Festival 2016. Signature underscores Hansen’s merits and connects Scandinavian simplicity with graceful warmth.

This 7-CD plus one DVD box set features: solo sessions from Hines' early days in 1928 and up to 1974 in New York and Chicago; 1948 radio broadcasts from Blue Note in Chicago with Louis Armstrong and his All Stars; a series of 1954-1955 live recordings from the infamous Club Hangover in San Francisco; 1954 collaborations with the Muggsy Spanier All Stars; numerous 1959 recordings with the Earl Hines Quartet from London House in Chicago; and on the DVD, a 1970 take of Earl Hines solo on piano and vocal. 

Classical Music

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves during the Civil War, jazz giant Duke Ellington began work on a special suite of music commemorating the struggles, triumphs and ongoing battle for the civil rights of blacks in America. This jazz masterpiece debuted in Chicago in the summer of 1963. Legends such as pianist and composer Billy Strayhorn and drummer Louie Bellson were a big part of the performance. And while portions of this master suite have been available for years, this is the very first time the complete piece has been available in it's entirety.

29 solo piano recordings with Art Tatum from 1932 to 1953. There are radio broadcasts with “Chinatown, My Chinatown”, “Lulu’s Back In Town”, “Where Or When” and Club recordings from The Embers in New York with “Memories Of You” and “Don’t Blame Me”. You will also find two rare private recording from a night club in Toronto 1949. It is “The Continental” and “Valse In C# Minor, Opus 64, #2” composed by Frederic Chopin. They were recorded only on this occasion.