Jazzman Blues

Steinway & Sons celebrates the centenary of iconic jazz singer Billie Holiday with an album of songs she made famous, arranged for solo piano by New York-based composer and pianist Jed Distler and performed by Steinway artist Lara Downes. The result is a musical portrait of the singer's life.

This is an important release for Dolphy fans and jazz lovers in general, as it contains two of the rare occasions in which Eric Dolphy was captured on film. All of the footage presented here features pristine image and sound quality. The first clip was shot for a TV performance given by Eric's quintet in Berlin in 1961, the same year he participated in a series of performances as a member of John Coltrane's quartet.

The great John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (1917-1993) was more than just one of the best jazz trumpeters of all time. A superlative musician of dazzling, astonishing technique, Gillespie was one of the key founders of the BeBop movement of the forties, to the point that his goatee, beret and "bop glasses" came to epitomize the new, revolutionary style. One of the masters of the Bop idiom, Gillespie also was the first jazzman to seriously experiment with Afro-Cuban rhythms, the leader of two of the most exciting big bands in history, a composer of note, a masterful showman onstage, and an enthusiastic, quick-witted personality off it. In many respects, Diz - as he was universally known - showed the way to every post-war trumpeter in the jazz field.

Blue delights: IF (BLUE) THEN (BLUE) - for the first time, Heinz Sauer has recorded with Joachim Kühn. Together with Michael Wollny, they have created an exciting homage to Kind Of Blue.