De Bassist – April 2021

Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto - Getz/Gilberto '76 (2016) {Resonance Records HCD-2021 rec 1976}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 331 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 131 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 163 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1976, 2016 Resonance Records / Rising Jazz Stars | HCD-2021
Jazz / Post Bop / Bossa Nova / Saxophone / Guitar

Having reunited for 1976's The Best of Two Worlds, saxophonist Stan Getz and Brazilian singer/guitarist João Gilberto celebrated the album's release with a week of shows at San Francisco's Keystone Corner. Marking over a decade since the pair had made history with 1964's landmark Getz/Gilberto album, the shows, which took place between May 11-16, 1976, would prove one of the rare times they appeared live together. Resonance Records' 2016 album, Getz/Gilberto '76 (and the separate release Moments in Time), documents these shows via live recordings made by Keystone Korner club owner Todd Barkan.

Louis Smith was a talented, but underrecorded, straight-ahead bop trumpeter who led two dates in the '50s before retiring to teach at the University of Michigan and the nearby Ann Arbor Public School system. For most of his career, he remained a teacher, making a brief comeback in the late '70s before returning to education. It wasn't until the mid-'90s that he began a recording career in earnest, turning out a series of albums for the Steeplechase label. A native of Memphis, Tennessee, Louis Smith began playing trumpet as a teenager. He graduated high school with a scholarship to Tennessee State University, where he studied music and became a member of the Tennessee State Collegians. Folllowing his college graduation, Smith did a little graduate work at Tennessee before transferring to the University of Michigan, where he studied with professor Clifford Lillya.

The centenary of the birth of Charles Mingus, in April 2022, has served to reinforce his importance in twentieth-century music. His “achievements surpass in historic and stylistic breadth those of any other major figure in jazz.” (New Grove Dictionary). Mingus could be angry, even violent, but also loving and tender, and all of these aspects of his complex character are reflected in his music. As he once said, “I'm trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it's difficult is because I am changing all the time.”

Michel Lambert - Out Twice (2003) (482 Music 482-1019) (with Milcho Leviev)
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 337 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 154 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 13 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2003 482 Music / Jazz From Rant | 482-1019
Jazz / Post Bop / Progressive Jazz / Drums

Michel Lambert divided his drumming leadership between two trios on Out Twice, one with pianist Milcho Leviev and bassist John Giannelli, and the other with bassist Barre Phillips and saxophonist Lionel Garcin. He also split his recording venues between American and European sites. Both ventures were unique; Lambert used his personal drawings and sketches as inspiration for the trios in their free interpretation of music and its relationship to visual art. Lambert’s drawings are linked individually to most of the tunes on the disc. The musicians reacted to this form of guidance in lieu of traditional notation, permitting the pieces to be personal musical articulations of the visual impact they experienced through the artwork.

It is fulfilling to attend a Carmen Souza concert just to listen to her breathtaking version of “Donna Lee” alone. However, there is much more to fall in love with than Miles Davis’ chart that Charlie Parker made famous by the singer on Live at Lagny Jazz Festival. Whether it is being mesmerised by her version of the standard “My Favourite Things,” or falling prey to the charms of the magnificent chart of that other famous son of Cape Verde, Horace Silver’s “Son of My Father,” or by Ms. Souza’s and Theo Pascal’s own “Afri Ka,” the effect is the same: breathless. For Carmen Souza is one of a kind - an original as rare as a throat singer and as exquisite as a vocalist who combines the best of Billie Holiday and Elis Regina - whose time has certainly come. Carmen Souza’s star is certainly on the rise…