3 Days of The Condor

In the 1970s, when prominent movie stars started to become the driving forces behind films, the jazz musician Dave Grusin was a favorite choice for film composer by several above-the-title male actors, notably Robert Redford, Paul Newman, and Warren Beatty. Redford starred in director Sydney Pollack's spy thriller 3 Days of the Condor, and Grusin got the scoring nod. The film was set in the New York City of the present day, the present day being 1975, and Grusin turned in music imbued with familiar elements of jazz fusion and R&B-funk. His "Condor! (Theme From 3 Days of the Condor)" could have been the instrumental track for a Steely Dan song of the time, and "Yellow Panic" was one of several tracks to employ wah-wah guitar à la Shaft.

The Jazz Club series is an attractive addition to the Verve catalogue. With it's modern design and popular choice of repertoire, the Jazz Club is not only opened for Jazz fans, but for everyone that loves good music.
Dave Grusin has been a highly successful performer, producer, composer, record label executive, arranger, and bandleader. As a pianist, Grusin tends toward the fusion and smooth end of jazz, but he's primarily an accomplished film and television soundtrack composer. Grusin played with Terry Gibbs and Johnny Smith while studying at the University of Colorado. He was the assistant music director and pianist for Andy Williams from 1959 to 1966, and then started his television composing career…

The selections included in this collection were chosen for the various uses of the orchestra: Cuba Libre, The Santa Clara Suite, The Suite From the Milagro Beanfield War, The Heart is A Lonely Hunter, and Condor, are all versions of movie themes, stretching over the last thirty years; Summer Sketches was commissioned and recorded live in 1982 at the Budokan in Tokyo; and the Three Cowboy Songs have been orchestrated, up-dated and recorded for this project. The Porgy & Bess Medley is included as an orchestral homage to the Gershwin talents.

These concerts were a joy, mostly because of the beautiful attitude of these musicians. Besides the inherent talent involved, they each exhibit an enormous amount of caring, which makes all the difference. ~ Dave Grusin

On his first instrumental album in over a decade, German jazz trumpeter/flügelhornist and pop star Till Brönner offers his own tribute to one of his earliest inspirations: the sound of Creed Taylor's CTI label. Co-produced by the artist with keyboardist Roberto Di Gioia and Samon Kawamura, these 12 tunes employ a crack studio band as well as strings, and evoke memories of the label's arrangers Don Sebesky, David Matthews, and Bob James, but with distinctly modern charts. The mood is relaxed, open, and fluid, and creativity runs high. The production is warm yet crystalline; though attention is paid to detail, nothing feels constrained by nostalgia. These 12 cuts wed hip, soulful jazz-funk grooves to modern jazz, sometimes infused with a subtly cinematic panache. "Will of Nature" has a tight front-line horn vamp (Brönner and saxophonist Magnus Lindgren) that invokes hard bop but sticks closer to spacy soul-jazz – Lindgren even quotes "A Love Supreme" in the intro to his solo. Di Gioia's Rhodes makes room inside the mix for exploration, while staying deep in the pocket provided by Wolfgang Haffner's drum kit and Albert Johnson's double bass. "The Gate" opens with lush, impressionistic strings that hover and float in the intro, highlighted by Lindgren's flute. They introduce Brönner's smoky flügelhorn melody, followed by double bass, rim-shot snare, and cymbals. The strings vanish and, in a nice timbral contrast, the slippery head is led by Lindgren's bass clarinet and the horn.

The old Rit is back! His smiling, swaggering guitar-playing alter ego has resurfaced, and he's invited all his friends over for a tumultuous jam, including George Duke, Marcus Miller, and Peter Erskine. Red-hot organist Joey DeFrancesco brings the Wes Montgomery out of Ritenour on the corner of "78th & 3rd," and a killer overhaul of Dave Grusin's movie theme "Three Days of the Condor," re-titled "Condor," is a reminder that Rit was kicking the smooth jazz before they had a name for it.