Jo Privat 1945 1958

A seminal session as a leader by the young Art Farmer - recorded for United Artists, and a great set of tight lyrical tunes, played by Farmer in his sparkling style - in a group along with Benny Golson on tenor and Bill Evans on piano. Evans is a special treat here, as the 1958 session was recorded at a time when he was making a fair bit of appearances in various rhythm sections for horn players (like Miles Davis) - and although this role in Evans' career was a short one, it yielded some amazingly beautiful moments, as you'll hear on this album. Art's brother Addison plays bass, and Dave Bailey rounds out the group on drums.

A seminal session as a leader by the young Art Farmer - recorded for United Artists, and a great set of tight lyrical tunes, played by Farmer in his sparkling style - in a group along with Benny Golson on tenor and Bill Evans on piano. Evans is a special treat here, as the 1958 session was recorded at a time when he was making a fair bit of appearances in various rhythm sections for horn players (like Miles Davis) - and although this role in Evans' career was a short one, it yielded some amazingly beautiful moments, as you'll hear on this album. Art's brother Addison plays bass, and Dave Bailey rounds out the group on drums.

Myhre makes his solo debut with the release of the captivating and mysterious Unheimlich Manoeuvre. The title is an obvious play on the life-saving technique, though whether the added negation makes the threatening or simply subverted remains ambiguous. More to the point, the English translation of unheimlich is “uncanny” or “eerie” – an apt descriptor for the sounds that Myhre creates. To borrow a phrase from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, Myhre conjures aural landscapes that suggest “a place both wonderful and strange,” stunning in their beauty with something alluringly unsettling lurking just underneath.

This release presents the complete October 22, 1958 concert by the Donald Byrd Quintet with Bobby Jaspar, performed at the famous Olympia Theatre. It contains both volumes of Byrd in Paris in their entirety, plus a rare version of “More of the Same” that is from the same performance but was only previously available on a long out of print compilation. Further tunes by the same group recorded at a Paris club a few days later (including three versions of songs that were also performed at the Olympia) have been added as a bonus.

Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy (2003) is one of the most popular and iconic of Korean films of the 2000s. A sensational and provocative piece of Asian extreme cinema, the film also has a superb score by Jo Yeong-wook, a regular composer for a number of Park’s works. Jo’s original score is rather eclectic in style - a mix of classical waltzes and modern electronica. Several tracks such as ‘Out of the Past’, ‘Dressed to Kill’, and ‘Frantic’ are inspired by the minimalist music of Philip Glass. There’s an unsettling quality to the music, particularly when it is haunted by the listener’s memory of the picture. Those who haven’t seen the film are likely to appreciate most of the tracks on offer here - the album is highly listenable and any fan of movie scores will dig this.

Le toréador, ou L'accord parfait (The Toreador, or The Perfect Agreement) is an opéra comique in two acts by the French composer Adolphe Adam with a libretto by Thomas-Marie-François Sauvage. It was first performed at the Opéra-Comique, Paris on May 18, 1849. It was a huge success and the work regularly appeared in the repertoire of the Opéra-Comique until 1869.

Australian vocalist Jo Lawry has forged an impressive solo career with a global fan base, while earning deep respect as a ‘musician’s singer’ within and beyond jazz circles. She’s also spent nearly a decade performing and recording with Sting and has worked with Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel. The two albums she released as a singer/songwriter/producer, Taking Picture (2015) and The Bathtub and the Sea (2017) garnered critical acclaim. Now, more than 10 years since her last solo jazz album, Lawry presents Acrobats, unequivocally returning to the genre alongside globally in-demand bassist Linda May Han Oh and versatile drummer Allison Miller.