If

“Anat Fort has a charming way of dispensing pastoralism and an insightful way of lining that pastoralism with depth”, wrote Jim Macnie, in the Village Voice, adding that “her trio has the kind of poise that lets her move from terra firma to the stratosphere". In the Jewish Week, George Robinson observed that Fort “writes music that is a skillful mix of the romantic and the cerebral, like watching a flower open, an enthralling combination of geometry and color…” The Israeli pianist made a lot of friends with her widely-praised ECM debut “A Long Story” in 2007, and the new disc, with her regular working band, will make some more. (Source: ecmrecords.com)

Forgotten Roads: The Best of IF was British jazz-rock group If's first compilation album, released on CD twenty years after the band's dissolution in 1975. The tracks and line-up were from the first three If albums. It was followed two years later by a collection of live recordings from tours in Europe. If was a seminal band formed in 1969 as Britain’s answer to the pioneering U.S. bands Blood, Sweat and Tears and Chicago. Unlike these groups, however, If did not have a trumpet or trombone player but instead featured two saxophone players. Essentially a live band, true to its strong jazz influences, If was one of the few jazz-rock groups, both then and now, to feature solos by all the band members, not just by the lead instruments.

The blues didn’t stop with the end of the 50s – as soul ruled the charts, the grittier end of black music was well represented by the artists on this compilation. Great guitar playing to the fore.

David Crosby's debut solo album was the second release in a trilogy of albums (the others being Paul Kantner's Blows Against the Empire and Mickey Hart's Rolling Thunder) involving the indefinite aggregation of Bay Area friends and musical peers that informally christened itself the Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra. Everyone from the members of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane to Crosby's mates in CSNY, Neil Young and Graham Nash, dropped by the studio to make significant contributions to the proceedings. (Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, and Bill Kreutzman, primarily, act as the ad hoc studio band, with other notables adding bits of flavor to other individual tracks.)

David Crosby's debut solo album was the second release in a trilogy of albums (the others being Paul Kantner's Blows Against the Empire and Mickey Hart's Rolling Thunder) involving the indefinite aggregation of Bay Area friends and musical peers that informally christened itself the Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra. Everyone from the members of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane to Crosby's mates in CSNY, Neil Young and Graham Nash, dropped by the studio to make significant contributions to the proceedings. (Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, and Bill Kreutzman, primarily, act as the ad hoc studio band, with other notables adding bits of flavor to other individual tracks.)