Jazz Colors

There may never be a setting as beautiful or a locale as ideal as a breathtaking ocean view complete with the sounds of beautiful Latin jazz floating over the ocean breeze. The fifth CD in the Colors of Latin Jazz series sets the scene for a collection of contemporary, smooth jazz peppered with Latin rhythms and percussion. This CD is a musical hybrid that's at once cool and smooth, yet hot and spicy! Up first is Jeff Linsky's beauty "Up Late," originally issued on Up Late by Concord Picante. His dynamic colors beckon the listener to "Come With Me," the second track sung and scatted by the inimitable Tania Maria on a cool samba just right for a hot day or night. Another smooth scorcher, "San Sabastian" by Ed Calle with special guest Arturo Sandoval is some of Sandoval's most melodic sax work bordered on all sides by the beauty of Spanish guitar, brass, and strings.

Lou Levy - Jazz In Four Colors (1956) {RCA–BMG Ariola ND74401 rel 1995}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (image)+CUE+LOG -> 237 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 94 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 17 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1956, 1995 RCA / BMG Ariola | ND 74401
Jazz / Bop / Cool / Piano

On Nov. 5, 1955, Billboard reported that RCA's jazz department signed Conte Candoli , Jack Montrose and Lou Levy. The move was made by Jack Lewis, RCA's pragmatic head of jazz A&R. Larger LPs meant more vinyl to fill, which, in turn, required studio pros who could get the job done in one or two takes. What's more, RCA was setting ambitious production goals for 1956, which meant a need for a longer list of releases. Discount record stores were popping up throughout the country and they had 12-inch racks to fill. During that same week, Lewis announced plans for RCA's now beloved Jazz Workshop series.

Roughly 18 albums into his career, jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut delivers his HighNote record label debut with 2015's A Million Colors in Your Mind. With a title that borrows inspiration from a short story by Mexican author Maria Cristina Mena, the album finds Chestnut once again delving deep into his own colorfully chorded and swinging set of well-chosen cover songs.

As if keyboardist/pianist/producer/composer Brian Culbertson hasn’t already done enough to cement himself in the hearts, minds, and souls of more fans than I even care to estimate, the music wiz goes a step further with his latest release, which is dedicated to his wife Michelle with whom he’s just celebrated two decades of marriage. The album, released on Valentine’s Day, appropriately is entitled Colors of Love and features some of the sweetest soul-stirring acoustic melodies you could ever imagine. Mind you, while his piano lines are acoustic, he still offers his usual heavy and powerful trademark funk (albeit in a slower or more mid-tempo cadence), turning to synth bass, Fender Rhodes, Wurlitzer, Hammond B3 organ, drum programming, and more. So, you get the best of both BC worlds here.

Colors of a Dream is the sixth HighNote Records album by trumpeter-composer Tom Harrell, featuring two basses played by Ugonna Okegwo and Esperanza Spalding, with the latter doubling on vocal, Jaleel Shaw on alto saxophone, Wayne Escoffery on tenor saxophone, and Johnathan Blake on drums. According to JazzTimes, this album deviates from Harrell's previous works. The use of piano is absent, and the three horns often play in block-chord formation. There are hints of Latin jazz, R&B and indie-rock. According to the review, "Colors of a Dream may deviate, but it never disappoints."

This meeting of the minds and bands of Afro-funk creator Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and American vibist and R&B/jazz innovator Roy Ayers is a collaboration that shouldn't work on the surface. Fela's music was raw, in your face politically and socially, and musically driven by the same spirit as James Brown's JBs. At the time of this recording in 1979, Ayers had moved out of jazz entirely and become an R&B superstar firmly entrenched in the disco world. Ayers' social concerns – on record – were primarily cosmological in nature. So how did these guys pull off one of the most badass jam gigs of all time, with one track led by each man and each taking a full side of a vinyl album? On hand were Fela's 14-piece orchestra and an outrageous chorus made up of seven of his wives and five male voices.

Colors of Jazz is Katelijne van Otterloo's second album, but the first on which she ventures into a few standards and her own songs in the jazz tradition…

This nearly forgotten Brazilian trombonist – a protégé of Airto Moreira and Flora Purim who made a moderate impact in the U.S. in the '70s only to mysteriously give it up and return to Brazil and subsequent obscurity – resurfaces on a CD reissue of a star-studded session from 1974. Producer Airto, who appears frequently on percussion (never mind the camouflaged percussion credits "Kenneth Nash and others; " one shake and you know it's Airto), succeeded in enlisting J.J. Johnson to make the horn arrangements and getting the polyrhythmic drums of Jack DeJohnette to drive the session. Cannonball Adderley makes one of his last appearances on record (he died nine months later), his alto sax burning in an otherwise cluttered stab at Baden Powell's "Canto de Ossanha," and venturing on the outside on "Chants to Burn."