New York 29

Red Patent Leather is a live album by the American rock and roll band the New York Dolls, released in 1984. It was recorded in New York a decade earlier, in March 1975, just a month before the group broke up during a Florida tour, and are the last recorded performances of the classic line-up, which includes: Johansen, Thunders, Sylvain, Kane, Jordan and Nolan.

The New York Trio, led by pianist Bill Charlap with bassist Jay Leonhart and drummer Bill Stewart, exists exclusively as a band to record for the Japanese jazz market, as Charlap has a regular trio with Peter Washington and Kenny Washington, while both Leonhart and Stewart are busy session musicians who occasionally also lead their own record dates. These 2007 sessions focus exclusively on the extensive songbook of the prolific Irving Berlin. Most of the ten tunes heard on this CD have long since become standards and are frequently recorded by jazz artists. One that isn't typically heard as an instrumental is "I Got the Sun in the Morning" (from the musical Annie Get Your Gun), heard in a loping yet infectious interpretation. "How Deep Is the Ocean" is one of Berlin's most recorded songs, yet this version sizzles with energy, unlike the typical ballad treatments…

This version of Handel's 'Messiah' could quite possibly be feasible today only as a Bernstein reissue. The quest for authenticity has overtaken the performance and recording of early music, and even a conductor recording 'Messiah' without attempting a historically-informed style of performance wouldn't dare introduce the level of revision that Bernstein did for this 1956 recording and the Carnegie Hall performances which preceded it.

Fine live session by The New York Jazz Quartet, an East Coast version of The Modern Jazz Quartet, although they play with more blues feeling and foundation. The lineup includes Frank Wess on tenor sax and flute, pianist Sir Roland Hanna, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Ben Riley.