Kirk Knoernschild

This three-CD box set, in producer and then label Boss' weirdly wired brain, encompasses two different sides of Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Discs one and two represent sporadic live recordings of Kirk from 1962 to 1972, all of them previously unreleased and issued courtesy of a Kirk collector named George Bonafacio. These two discs contain Kirk classics such as "Domino," "Blacknuss," and an excerpt from "Three for the Festival," as well as singular Kirk interpretations of "I Say a Little Prayer," "Freddie Freeloader," "Lester Leaps In," "Giant Steps," "Sister Sadie," and more. These two discs are chock-full of stellar performances that are well-recorded despite being fan tapes. The musicians on these dates range from bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pederson to Hilton Ruiz, Jerome Cooper, Tete Montoliu, and many others…

Whether or not the four individual albums packaged with in Aces Back to Back are among Rahsaan Roland Kirk's finest is of no consequence. The fact that they have been assembled in a package that offers the listener a sense of Kirk's development and continuity is the issue here. And in this way, Aces Back to Back is a supreme collection. The four albums included - Left & Right, Rahsaan Rahsaan, Prepare Thyself to Deal With a Miracle, and Other Folks Music - date from 1968 to 1976 and chart dimensional growth of Kirk's completely original music. There's the outsider wizardry of Left & Right that melds the innovations of John Coltrane and Scott Joplin across an entire range of highly experimental yet wonderfully human music. Guests included Roy Haynes, Alice Coltrane, Julius Watkins, and many others in a band that ranged from a quartet to a full orchestra…

Humanité is unlike any album Grammy® Award Winner and Global Recording Artist Kirk Whalum has ever made – the synergistic result of encounters made, and relationships formed onstage and off with some of the finest recording artists from all over the world.

Andy Kirk's Orchestra was at the height of its popularity during the late 1930s, still riding high from their hit "Until the Real Thing Comes Along." The star of that record, singer Pha Terrell, is on the majority of the songs on this CD (the fourth in Classics' complete reissuance of the master takes of all Andy Kirk recordings from the swing era), but there are some hotter tunes too, most notably "Mess-A-Stomp," "Jump Jack Jump," "Dunkin' a Doughnut" and "Mary's Idea"…

It's hard to fathom today, but Roland Kirk was considered a gimmick for much of his early career. For sure, the man was a cagey character, which certainly didn't help his reputation. People were bemused by the way he played multiple horns simultaneously, including some horns that he invented himself. His style wasn't easy to pin down, either, so fluent was he in every jazz idiom.

Snorre Kirk - the composer, bandleader and drummer - has long made his mark on listeners in Scandinavia and further south. An exquisitely flexible musician with a keen eye for tradition, he has worked with some of the finest names on the international jazz scene. In recent years he has flourished not only as a bandleader but also as a full-fledged composer, finding it imperative to become familiar with the musical DNA of fellow musicians in order to cater his writing specifically to the soloists needs, thereby creating a unique sound. On Tangerine Rhapsody the drummer is joined by American tenor saxophonist Stephen Riley and Snorre's regular team, featuring pianist Magnus Hjort and bassist Anders Fjeldsted. Riley, who has worked with the likes of Norah Jones and Wynton Marsalis, is known for his sublime tenor sound and unmatched musical prowess and has been hailed by critics and fans the world over. Here he also gets to play alongside Kirk's regular tenor master Jan Harbeck on two tracks, one of the highlights on a magnificent album.