Mike Connors

Jason Anick’s sheer joy in playing is evident from the first track on Tipping Point. While tipping his hat to Stéphane Grappelli, Jason maintains his own distinct voice – especially in his own compositions. Equally gifted as a musician and composer, Jason attracts new listeners to the violin and mandolin. Tipping Point is an uplifting and refreshing project deserving of countless repeated listenings…

Before becoming a bandleader, pianist/organist/composer Lonnie Liston Smith made essential contributions to important recordings by Roland Kirk, Pharoah Sanders, Gato Barbieri, and Miles Davis. After founding the Cosmic Echoes, he issued six influential electric albums for Flying Dutchman between 1973 and 1977 – including Astral Traveling and Visions of a New World – that established him as a jazz-funk innovator. Between 1978 and 1980, his four Columbia outings – including Exotic Mysteries and Love Is the Answer – consciously stitched together funk, disco, and smooth jazz. After a spiritual awakening, Smith spent the next two decades recording for Dr. Jazz and Startrak Records, through 1998's Transformation. Following that, he turned to session work for 25 years. He started recording under his own name again with Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge on 2023's Lonnie Liston Smith JID017.

The much-loved and much-missed songstress Phyllis Hyman’s debut album for Arista Records, 1979’s SOMEWHERE IN MY LIFETIME was an amalgam of six tracks from Sing A Song, her second LP for Buddah Records and four new tracks she recorded after Buddah became defunct and was bought by Arista.
With production by T. Life, her then-husband Larry Alexander and renowned songwriter Skip Scarborough and Arista labelmate Barry Manilow (responsible with Ron Dante for the title track), SOMEWHERE IN MY LIFETIME featured major players such as Onaje Allen Gumbs, Herbie Hancock, Bob Babbitt, Azar Lawrence, Monty Alexander and Will Lee. The album reached No. 15 on the U.S. R&B charts and spawned two charted singles, the title cut which became Phyllis’ first Top 20 R&B hit and a cover of pop rock group Exile’s ‘Kiss You All Over,’ a dance music/club hit.

Jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton and Larry Coryell collaborated on Duster back in ’67 evoking wider use of the term ‘jazz rock’ and stimulating broader appreciation for what was then a very fresh-sounding new genre that fused jazz and rock. Coryell can certainly be credited with attracting guitarists from both sides of the fence to the jazz rock scene but Miles Davis’ highly improvisational Bitches Brew with John McLaughlin (recorded in ’69) blew minds and made jazz rock history. Listen carefully and you can hear Miles snapping fingers to set tempos, assigning solos to players and whispering direction such as, “Keep it tight.”