The OJOYO sound (Safrojazz) is a fusion of Capetown born Morris Goldberg's South African music heritage, with the American music he learned to love from listening to records. Morris has performed with many American artists, notably Paul Simon, Harry Belafonte and Herbie Hancock; and South African artists including Hugh Masekela, and Jonathan Butler. Several other OJOYO musicians have recorded and toured with Paul Simon, Lori Anderson, and Edie Brickell, while Capetown native Anton Fig appears nightly on the David Letterman show.

The Music of Billy Strayhorn long thought of as a chapter within the Duke Ellington songbook has become recognized as one of the most important bodies of work in 20th century American music. In Strayhorn's short life time the greater part of recorded examples of his masterworks were by the Ellington Orchestra or groups led by players from that revered organization. In the half century since the death of the man affectionately known as Sweet Pea many of his classic compositions have found their way into the mainstream jazz repertory via recordings by some of the genre's greatest players. Ellington's eulogistic 1968 LP And His Mother Called Him Bill brought into sharp focus the breadth of Strayhorn'swork. Now we can add John DiMartino's uniquely personal interpretations to that illustrious list.

DISTANCIA

Includes 2D version.

As the title of Christian Artmann's new CD The Middle of Life suggests, he's no ing�nue. The German-born flutist, now based in the San Francisco Bay Area after living for more than 15 years in New York, is a seasoned composer with a small but acclaimed discography that's contributed significantly to keeping the flute in the foreground of the contemporary jazz scene. As for many of us, the experience of the pandemic inspired deep reflection, and with his fourth album (and third for Sunnyside) Artmann takes stock of what matters most. Part of what makes The Middle of Life a strikingly cohesive project is Artmann's choice of ensemble. The album features Hungarian-born pianist Laszlo Gardony (also on Artmann's previous release Our Story), as well as Gardony's longtime collaborators, bassist John Lockwood and drummer Yoron Israel.

When the history of Jazz during the COVID-19 pandemic gets written, Armen Donelian warrants a detailed chapter. Though he composed more than a dozen new pieces through the spring of 2021, the veteran pianist and educator didn't use the downtime to reinvent his repertoire as much as he deepened his pianistic approach and sharpened his ears in the context of a supremely sensitive new trio with bassist Jay Anderson and drummer Dennis Mackrel. The group's unabashedly beautiful debut, Fresh Start, is Donelian's 14th album and his 11th for Sunnyside, the label that has documented the bulk of his work as a leader since the mid-1980s.

After nearly two years of livestreaming, teaching classes remotely, and performing solo concerts from the comfort of his home, Hungarian-born pianist and longtime Berklee College of Music professor Laszlo Gardony decided enough was enough. It was time to go back into the studio with other musicians face-to-face and play together again. Just like in The Before Times. // And so, on January 14th and 15th of 2022, Gardony gathered in Boston's WGBH studio with his longstanding deep-listening gestalt crew of bassist John Lockwood and drummer Yoron Israel to perform some new compositions and improvise with a clean slate. The result is precisely what the title of Gardony's 14th album implies, as the three kindred spirits exhibited an uncanny Close Connection over the course of these twelve tracks. With Laszlo's preferred rhythm tandem returning once again, following their simpatico work together on 2003's Ever Before Ever Again, 2006's Natural Instinct, 2008's Dig Deep, 2011's Signature Time a

Brazilian Dream Blooms is the remastered version of "Brazilian Dream" with an additional bonus track "Dan�a". This is an ENHANCED CD that includes a movie clip of a live performance of "Dan�a" recorded in Brazil. // Fleurine composed all the music on guitar and found herself a dream band made up out of up and coming, and some well established Brazilian musicians on the New York Jazz scene, some of whom she has collaborated with for many years like Vitor Goncalves on piano and accordion, Chico Pinheiro on electric guitar, Eduardo Belo on bass, Ian Faquini on acoustic guitar and Rogerio Boccato on percussion a.k.a. Boys from Brazil. Some familiar American boys were added to the mix, Chris Potter on Flutes and Saxes and Brad Mehldau on Fender Rhodes and piano to complete the dream.

La Marseillaise is Gardony's third solo piano album in seven years. That recent productivity is all the more remarkable considering that in the three decades of his career prior to that, he had recorded without accompaniment only once, on his highly regarded 1993 Sunnyside debut Changing Standards. Why the shift in emphasis? "I don't know," Gardony admits. "But I like the possibilities of energy, orchestration, and vibe when playing in solo, and obviously it's a very personal statement. I'm doing what feels natural to me at the time, and that joyful focus creates the music."

For her 2018 release Brazilian Dream, Fleurine composed all the music on guitar and found herself a dream band made up out of up and coming, and some well-established Brazilian musicians on the New York Jazz scene, some of whom she has collaborated with for many years like Vitor Goncalves on piano and accordion, Chico Pinheiro on electric guitar, Eduardo Belo on bass, Ian Faquini on acoustic guitar and Rogerio Boccato on percussion AKA Boys from Brazil. Some familiar American boys were added to the mix, Chris Potter on flutes and saxes and Brad Mehldau on Fender Rhodes and piano to complete the dream.

The genius of pianist and composer Thelonious Monk is unassailable. Since his death in 1982, he has become recognized as one of the greatest composers of jazz - and of the wider world of music. The year 2017 was the centennial of Monk's birth, and brought scores of tributes, including a well-received stay of pianist Frank Kimbrough's quartet at the Jazz Standard club in New York City. Like many jazz pianists, Kimbrough found Monk's music a revelation when he first heard it. From the outset of his career, Kimbrough has returned time and again to Monk's compositions. After nearly four decades of study, reflection, and performance, Kimbrough has established a relationship with these pieces and found a way to express himself through the prism of Monk. When the Standard approached Kimbrough to put together a quartet to play Monk's music, he picked the brilliant rhythm section of bassist Rufus Reid and drummer Billy Drummond. His choice for lead horn voice was the multi-instrumentalist Scott Robinson, with whom he has played for many years and in many combinations, most notably with the Maria Schneider Orchestra. After the first set of the October 17th, 2017 performance at the Standard Kimbrough's friend Mait Jones urged that the group record Monk's entire oeuvre, a feat that Kimbrough had never considered. A jazz fan and co-presenter of his own Princeton series JazzNights Jones began a lifelong appreciation of Monk when he heard the master live at the Five Spot in New York City in 1957. Over the next few days, Jones doubled down on his intent to make the project reach fruition, bringing in his friend and fellow jazz head, Dr. Dorothy Lieberman, to help co-produce the effort. The musicians began the intensive work such a project demands. Finally, in April of 2018 Kimbrough led a trio and then the quartet at Jazz at the Kitano, polishing 30 new tunes on the way to the full Monk catalog of 70 pieces.

2018 release. Christian Artmann, a New York-based flute player and composer, is passionate about bridging musical boundaries and showcasing the flute in contemporary music. His musical associations include pianists/composers Laszlo Gardony, Yago Vazquez, Gregg Kallor, Rubens Salles and Philippine Duchateau, bassists Johannes Weidenmueller and Chris van Voorst van Beest, drummer Jeff Hirshfield, percussionists Laura Inserra and Luiz Claudio, mezzo soprano Elena McEntire, the Princeton Pro Musica and the Aspen Festival Orchestra. He has performed at the Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Django Reinhardt Jazz Festival near Paris, the Smetana Hall in Prague as well as clubs in New York, Boston, Paris and Vienna.

Great artists can't help but respond to the world around them, absorbing the tensions, angst and joys vibrating throughout society. At the same time, musicians provide energy for the necessary struggle, washing away the dust of everyday life, as drum legend Art Blakey said, describing jazz's transformative power. This double duty is at the core of pianist Laszlo Gardony's new solo album Serious Play. He created most of the music spontaneously in the studio, with a few soulful reimaginations of beloved standards added, providing a potent reminder that the longtime Berklee College of Music professor is one of jazz's most emotionally trenchant and melodically inventive solo piano practitioners. Serious Play is Gardony 12th album and 9th recording for Sunnyside. Possessing a ravishing touch and a singular style that draws on the post-bop continuum, various strains of folk music and his Central European classical training, he went into the studio with two goals that went hand in hand, says Gardony, who couldn't help but carry with him an acute sense of rising anxiety in the country. One goal was to sit down and improvise for an extended amount of time, revisiting the compositional approach that led to Clarity, his celebrated 2013 solo piano session. "The other was to organically connect that soul-baring material to soul soothing arrangements of beloved standards."

ALL THE DREAMS

POETICA