LA Workshop Norwegain Wood is a project arranged by Joe Pasquale. This album features Lee Ritenour, Ray Parker Jr, Steve Lukather and more great musicians from the sessiondays.
This second solo album shows the versatility of Peter Erskine at its best: beautiful varied compositions (highlights being Corazon and King Richard II Suite) with an inspired cast of well-known musicians like Joe Lovano, Bob Mintzer, Marc Johnson and Kenny Werner. Moreover the masterful material is recorded with an unbelievable clarity of sound. One of, if not THE best solo effort of Peter Erskine and a recording that stands tall in the incredible discography of Peter Erskine.
Bob Berg's third release as a leader (released on a Japanese Denon CD) was his first fairly commercial date. Doubling on tenor and soprano but not sounding too distinctive on either, Berg performs eight funky group originals with a sextet also including keyboardist Don Grolnick, guitarist Mike Stern, bassist Will Lee, drummer Peter Erskine and Robby Kilgore on additional keyboards; altoist David Sanborn drops by to add some heat to "Kalimba." The R&B-ish music is very much of the period and sounds a bit dated now, but has its moments of interest due to the high musicianship of the players.
Arthur Stewart "Art" Farmer (August 21, 1928 – October 4, 1999) was an American jazz trumpeter and flugelhorn player. He also played flumpet, a trumpet–flugelhorn combination specially designed for him. He and his identical twin brother, double bassist Addison Farmer, started playing professionally while in high school. Art gained greater attention after the release of a recording of his composition "Farmer's Market" in 1952. He subsequently moved from Los Angeles to New York, where he performed and recorded with musicians such as Horace Silver, Sonny Rollins, and Gigi Gryce and became known principally as a bebop player.
Ryuichi Sakamoto's first solo album appeared before he formed Yellow Magic Orchestra in late 1978, after the young keyboardist had earned his M.A. in music from Tokyo University. Six long instrumentals make up this CD, but apart from a taste for Asian-sounding synth lines, they hint at very little of what was to come in YMO. "Thousand Knives" is a long disco-lite jazzy workout with a very un-synthesized guitar solo by Kazumi Watanabe (who would later join YMO on tour and have his solo album produced by Sakamoto)…
Tenor virtuoso Bob Berg teams up with (a.o) Dennis Chambers and Mike Stern to create an album with a combination of heavy fusion and jazz ballads. The album was a 1991 Grammy Nominee and in this case, that really was for a good reason. Bob Berg shows the duality which modern jazz saxophone players strive to achieve: being able to play funkfusion as well as jazz. Bob Berg does both exceptionally well.
1985 Japanese edition of a classic featuring Terumasa Hino on trumpet and Sadao Watanabe on alto sax, recorded live at Ginza Yamaha Hall, Tokyo on March 15, 1969.
The strong tenor voice of Bob Berg speaks volumes more on CYCLES, than he was ever able to say in the context of the Miles Davis group….Strong blowing, strong compositions, strong band. A welcome alternative to the endless stream of fuzak that seems to be flooding the record bins these days.