Adrian Benegas Arcanum

Doug's newest project, his entry in the Jazz Is Dead album series helmed by Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, takes his unique and timeless art and places it within the context of a musical culture that has always taken cues from his 70s classics. There's no mistaking the musical mind that created legendary albums like Infant Eyes and Adam's Apple, but the encounter of that with the distinctive jazz-hip hop-funk-noir that is the Younge/Muhammad/JID trademark creates something worthy of comparison to Carn's past work but which could only have been made right now. One can detect nods to musical motifs by Carn's jazz peers that have served as frequent sample fodder, but his compositional and improvisational integrity remain indisputable throughout.

Flemish composer Adrian Willaert – who served as maestro di capella at the Cathedral of San Marco in Venice from 1527 until his death in 1562 – contributed so much to the Italian renaissance; while he wasn't the first to develop the Venetian polychoral style, its propagation in the mid-sixteenth century may well be laid at his feet. Willaert helped introduce the forms of canzona and ricercare, which greatly aided the growth of instrumental music in the years to come. The nearly overarching interest in chromaticism among Italian composers in the late renaissance can be traced to Willaert's door. Nevertheless, toss a dart into a crowd of music scholars and chances are you won't manage to hit one that has much of an opinion about Willaert's work or his music – it is seldom recorded and CDs devoted to Willaert alone are rare. On their own, these aspects make Oehms Classics' Adrian Willaert: Musica Nova – featuring the talents of expert vocal ensemble Singer Pur – special, valuable, and significant for purposes of study and filling a major hole in the renaissance repertoire. But beyond that, it is a fine listening experience as well.

This recording, made in 1991, contains two fine performances. Indeed the performance of Hamlet is better than fine, it is positively thrilling. The Polish orchestra are well able to deliver on this and Leaper shows considerable empathy for the music. The recording is good, if a little lacking in absolute clarity at the bottom end which tends to be just a touch inclined to 'muddiness' at moments of greatest demand. This should not be over-emphasised in view of the excellence of the music making and the general acceptance of the recording. Indeed, the weighty sound-stage and quite close balance suits the heavier approach of Leaper when compared to Karajan on DGG for example, and to a lesser extent, Jansons on Chandos.

Over the last 12 months, Adrian Younge and A Tribe Called Quest member Ali Shaheed Muhammad have been inviting some legendary musicians to swing by the former’s Los Angeles studio to make fresh tracks with vintage equipment. The results are detailed on “Jazz Is Dead”, a superb album that combines elements of dusty soundtrack jazz, soul, jazz-funk, Latin jazz and head-nodding live beats influenced by the duo’s hip-hop roots. Highlights include the atmospheric, slow-motion warmth of Roy Ayers collaboration “Hey Lover”, the floor-rocking fusion heaviness of epic Azymuth hook-up “Apocaliptico”, the languid sweetness of ‘Down Deep” (featuring Doug Carn) and the samba-soaked sunshine that is Marcos Valle composition “Nao Saia Da Praca”.

In February 2018, Roy Ayers performed four sold out shows in Los Angeles as part of the Jazz Is Dead Black History Month series. It wasn’t until 2020 that fans of Ayers discovered that in addition to those shows, the legendary vibraphone player had also recorded an entire album of new material with Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad.

Marcos and the other Brazilian luminaries Adrian and Ali hosted for Jazz Is Dead, are able to create an entirely different sound and feel using the exact same palette.

The instrumental trio Azymuth modernized the sound and style of Brazilian jazz with their electronic instruments, angular arrangements and ingenious synthesis of jazz, funk, rock and samba. After the passing of founding keyboard player José Roberto Bertrami in 2012, Alex Malheiros (bass) and Ivan “Mamão” Conti (drums) recruited synthesizer samurai Kiko Continentinho to the trio as it continued to build on their sound, now in their fifth decade of pushing the boundaries of their beloved samba.