Kenny G.

In 1957, the greatest year for recorded music including modern jazz, Detroit was a hot spot, a centerpiece to many hometown heroes as well as short-term residents like John Coltrane and Miles Davis. It was here that Trane connected with pianist Tommy Flanagan, subsequently headed for the East Coast, and recorded this seminal hard bop album. In tow were fellow Detroiters - drummer Louis Hayes, bassist Doug Watkins, and guitarist Kenny Burrell, with the fine trumpeter from modern big bands Idrees Sulieman as the sixth wheel...

Fly Me to the Moon compiles a pair of tenor saxophonist James Moody's mid-'60s sessions for the Argo label. The 1962 date "Another Bag" vaults Moody far past his bop roots. Another in a series of collaborations with arranger and composer Tom McIntosh, its rich, deep sound is both fiercely cerebral and nakedly emotional. Paired with a superb group including pianist Kenny Barron, trumpeter Paul Serrano, trombonist John Avant, bassist Ernest Outlaw and drummer Marshall Thompson, Moody creates a thoughtful interpretation of the emerging soul-jazz idiom that is both consciously hip yet surprisingly introspective; the music is both angular and accessible, bolstered by a clutch of clever, dynamic McIntosh melodies…

Trumpeter Kenny Dorham was one of the most underrated talents of the bop and hard bop eras. Although he did not hit high note or influence a lot of players, Dorham's appealing sound and consistently creative ideas should have made him a star in the jazz world instead of just a journeyman. On this CD reissue (which adds an alternate take of "'Sposin'" to the original eight-song LP program), Dorham and altoist Ernie Henry (on his final session) are heard in a pianoless quartet (with either Eddie Mathias or Wilbur Ware on bass and drummer G.T. Hogan) playing three of the trumpeter's originals (including "Lotus Blossom") and four standards. Highlights include "I'll Be Seeing You" and a rare revival of "Is It True What They Say About Dixie?" The sparse setting (unusual for a Dorham session) works quite well.

With these songs from seventeenth-century Europe (Monteverdi and Purcell) and modern Latin America (Rodriguez, Jara, and others), two golden ages of song are juxtaposed on De Pasión Mortal . This is a vivid album that invites listeners into this wonderful, evocative music and to reflect on eternal human themes: love, loss, fear, ecstasy, and much more besides. Nicholas Mulroy, Elizabeth Kenny and Toby Carr offer performances of songs that are separated by time and space, but united by much else, and find expression in music full of beauty and unflinching truth. This pairing of old and new conveys a sense that, while the world turns and changes, people do not.