For Count Basie Trio

A four-CD/digital box set titled The Founder, honouring the unique career of jazz figurehead Norman Granz, will be released by Verve/UMe on 7 December. It features a 44-track, chronological collection of music spanning his unique career, with recordings by most of the distinguished musicians he recorded.

This riveting music documentary traces the history of piano legend Oscar Peterson, from his early days as Montreal's teenage boogie-woogie sensation through his meteoric rise to international celebrity. One highlight in the treasure trove of musical gems is the legendary Oscar Peterson Trio (bassist Ray Brown and guitarist Herb Ellis) who, after a twenty-year hiatus, reunited in order to 'prove that it still had the magic.' Over 45 minutes of classic and contemporary performances complemented by rare film footage and in-depth interviews with a cast of jazz legends, creates a chronicle spanning four decades of Oscar Peterson's unforgettable music.

A 6 CD, 110 track compilation which includes a Jimmy Smith track, two Grant Green tracks, a Lonnie Smith track with David Newman on saxophone and Melvin Sparks on guitar and a Reuben Wilson track with Melvin Sparks on guitar.

A 6 CD, 110 track compilation which includes a Jimmy Smith track, two Grant Green tracks, a Lonnie Smith track with David Newman on saxophone and Melvin Sparks on guitar and a Reuben Wilson track with Melvin Sparks on guitar.

There are as many flavours of jazz as there are pebbles on a beach, but the majority combine rhythmic invention with instrumental virtuosity to create a sound that can transport the listener to a different plane. Whether your ear is caught by the saxophone of Earl Bostic or Eddie Harris, the flute of Herbie Mann, Ray Charles’ effervescent keyboards (he played sax too) or the music of Cuban-born ‘King of the Mambo’ Perez Prado, whose 1958 US chart-topper ‘Patricia’ is familiar from countless movies and television ads,one thing is certain – the jazz instrumental still reigns supreme.

Oddly omitting Thelonious Monk, this DVD presentation of CBS Television's The Sound of Jazz still rates near the top of jazz on the small screen, albeit in a somewhat diminished capacity, lagging behind the earlier VHS release. But for most jazz fans, any edition of The Sound of Jazz still boasts, regardless of drawbacks, the ultimate televised gathering of many of the music's key artists. Particularly evident with this transfer is how the studio lights wreak havoc with the reflections in the brass instruments, especially near the beginning of the program, emitting strange black bands that refract and compromise the image, a problem picked up less clearly in the VHS version.