Craft Recordings

Craft Recordings has revealed the full details of the forthcoming Poppies: Assorted Finery from the First Psychedelic Age: a compilation of 1960s-era psychedelic rock featuring cult-classic artists such as Buffy Sainte-Marie, Circus Maximus and Southwest F.O.B.

This is the second, and perhaps more aggressively experimental, installment in the Bang on Can All-Stars’ acclaimed commissioned composer series. Like its predecessor, More Field Recordings once again explores strange new terrain where found sound, samples and archival audio collide with contemporary classical music, written by a wide range of artists and performed by the All-Stars.

This Naxos disc is a coupling of two recordings originally issued by Koch. Both the recordings were part of Robert Craft's continuation of the complete Stravinsky edition he had begun on MusicMasters. Craft's second Oedipus Rex is less than entirely compelling. Martyn Hill is a virile Oedipus and Jennifer Lane is a noble Jocasta, but Craft is a bit too restrained in his rhetoric and a tad too reserved in his dramatics.

Is there any doubt that Robert Craft is the reigning Stravinsky conductor of our time? His years of friendship with, apprenticeship to and quasi-adoption by Stravinsky certainly give him bona fides for this, but it is his impeccable musicianship that tells here. These performances have appeared before on CD Jeu de cartes and Danses concertantes on Koch, and the Scènes de Ballet, Variations, and Capriccio on MusicMasters all recorded in the 1990s. Naxos is in the process of re-releasing on their own label all of Craft's Stravinsky recordings of that period (plus a few new ones done specifically for them) and the series is an undiluted triumph.

Craft Recordings is pleased to announce the release of Chet Baker’s The Legendary Riverside Albums. The deluxe album set presents the artist’s output as a leader for the renowned jazz label, recorded and released between 1958 and 1959: (Chet Baker Sings) It Could Happen To You, Chet Baker In New York, Chet and Chet Baker Plays The Best Of Lerner And Loewe. The recordings, which feature such icons as Bill Evans, Johnny Griffin and Kenny Burrell, have been cut from their original analog master tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio.

On May 15, 1953, five of jazz's most influential musicians - Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Max Roach and Bud Powell - met at Massey Hall in Toronto for their first and only known recording as a quintet. Although only a small audience had the opportunity to experience this historic evening in person, it was captured on tape. The resulting album, The Quintet: Jazz at Massey Hall, became one of the genre's most important and acclaimed releases.