Ben Bernstein

Andreas Toftemark is a young and talented Danish saxophonist and composer, who has spent the last 8 years of his life making a career for himself abroad; with 1 year in Sweden, 3 years in Amsterdam and 4 years in New York. In New York he made a living as a professional jazz saxophonist, for all of the time that he was living there, and he has been very inspired and influenced by the capital of jazz. Toftemark has studied with prominent names, such as Joel Frahm, Ben Wendel, Sam Yahel and Eric Alexander. He has performed around the world and he has played with many internationally acclaimed jazz musicians, like Peter Bernstein, Rodney Green, Ethan Iverson and Paul Sikivie.

The disc contains two original lp recordings, the first, The Eleventh Hour", was recorded in August, 1962, and the second "Sandy's Gone", in September, 1963. Both were/are on Verve. The Eleventh Hour finds Mr. Hodges with strings turning in twelve lush and rich tracks which may well be appropriate listening at the eleventh hour. Jazz musicians with strings? Well it worked with Ben Webster, Charlie Parker (both on Verve by the way) and with Art Pepper on the Winter Moon sessions. Now the named were all master musicians who seem perfectly at home in this rather unusual setting. Hodges is no exception and provides us with some truly beautiful music. Mr. Ellington would surely have approved. The second recording is…

The six symphonies were recorded between 1973 and 1975, and for their time were the best available recordings of Nielsen's music. They constitute the bulk of this 2008 box set, and though two smaller sets of the symphonies and the concertos were issued by EMI in 2007, this seven-disc compendium provides much more music at a comparable cost.