Art

Modern Art is the prelude recording for Art Farmer prior to his partnership with Benny Golson in the Jazztet, and also foreshadows the classy, tasteful inventiveness that group brought to the modern jazz world two years after this 1958 session. Pianist Bill Evans is in here, just before his pivotal work with Miles Davis on the classic album Kind of Blue, and was the table setter for McCoy Tyner's membership in the Jazztet. Brother Addison Farmer on bass and the great drummer Dave Bailey round out this sterling quintet that specializes in playing music with a subtle approach, which is neither tame nor conservatively lazy. Included on this date is the great Junior Mance tune "Jubilation," perfectly understated in a light gospel, soul-jazz, tuneful melody with both horns wonderfully matched up in balanced unison, side by side.

SOMM RECORDINGS is delighted to announce the debut recording of composer-pianist Iain Farrington’s Art Deco Trio, featuring 15 new instrumental arrangements blending classical and jazz influences of songs by George Gershwin.

For many jazz fans, the high point of Art Pepper’s late-’70s comeback was a fournight stand at New York’s Village Vanguard that was recorded for Contemporary Records and released, at first, as four albums, and later as a nine-CD set. These rangy, sometimes raucous performances with pianist George Cables, bassist George Mraz and drummer Elvin Jones, captured the questing, Coltrane-inflected sound of his later years, while still reflecting the lyric, bop schooled virtuosity of his early work.

Art School Girlfriend, Aka Polly Mackey, releases her second album Soft Landing, via Fiction Records. The album is self-described as a series of “small euphorias”, it is an album that finds Mackey shifting her sound towards tactile electronics whilst retaining the floating melodies of her debut.

A live set celebrating the group’s 50th anniversary loops in a 20-piece orchestra, rousing poetry and new improvisers among the hardcore veterans.