Leading Lightly

Harry Chapin’s brother Steve and his drummer Howard Fields remember: “On April 11th 1977, Harry Chapin and his band, near the end of their first tour overseas, performed a concert broadcast over German radio at a small auditorium in the city of Bremen in front of 400 people."

Along with Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk and Horace Silver, the prolific Benny Golson created some of the most memorable compositions in the jazz repertoire. This reissue features his first albums as a leader, and many of his most familiar originals are to be found here. In a 1958 Downbeat article Ralph Gleason highlighted “the extraordinary attention jazz musicians are currently paying to his compositions”. Indeed by the early 60s it seemed that every rehearsal band in the UK and everyone on the jazz club circuit had at least three or four of his originals in the book…

Original Album Classics is a 5CD box set with original artwork 'mini LP' CD wallets in deluxe packaging. Includes the albums: Simple Things, Welcome Home, Touch The Sky, Pearls: Songs of Goffin and King and Love Makes The World.

Dean Evenson is one of the true visionaries of the New Age/Ambient musical genre. He plays several instruments including the flute, percussion, synthesizer and keyboards. His music is generally sounds of nature combined with flute melodies and other instruments for ambient and meditative purposes. He is a prolific musician and composer, an entrepreneur, media pioneer and the co-founder of Billboard-charting independent music label, Soundings of the Planet. At every turn, Evenson’s life has taken bold steps in new and exciting directions. The success and pioneering nature of his creative work attest to a dynamic personality and a life-long commitment to the positive evolution of life on this planet in relationship with the natural and spiritual world. Evenson’s story is that of an artist, technological innovator, broad-minded thinker - a modern-day Renaissance man…

Is a four-CD box set of Fairport Convention 1967-1974 BBC recordings excessive? After all, even the Beatles only got two CDs of Beeb tracks into official release. But it really isn't too much for fans of the band, for the quality of most of the stuff here is truly good, even if the very best of it was already issued on the Heyday compilation…

The brainchild of producer Gerry Teekens, United Soul Experience extricates trombonist Wycliffe Gordon from the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra orbit and teams him with some of the most interesting young talent in the Criss Cross stable. Tradition-minded but not predictable, the music alludes to several jazz and funk styles without settling into any one of them. Gordon, tenor saxophonist Seamus Blake, and pianist David Kikoski play like accomplished young veterans who continue to search for something more. Bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Bill Stewart generate a circuitous kind of swing, stating a pulse and deconstructing it in the same instance. The leader’s five compositions evince memorable melodies and impose just the right amount of organization to the band’s loose-jointed execution.