Noren & Crossley

New albums from the Canadian progressive band Dream Aria don't come once per year. The band's projects–led by Don Stagg (keyboards), Ann Burstyn (lead vocals) and Garry Flint (drums, producer)–instead, like the finest wine, take some time to mature before the cork is popped and a new album emerges from the Dream Aria team…

Every once in a great while, the stars align and the muses visit a concert hall to smile beneficently on the musicians assembled there. How else to account for the ineffable chemistry that infuses the best jazz concerts? Well, the muses were working overtime when vibraphonist Gary Burton took to the stage with the Hum Trio and then The Ahmad Jamal Trio. The resulting performance must rank among these musicians best work, with the kind of soul-deep communication that is often expected but so rarely occurs live in concert.

This DVD highlights the advantages perfectly: there are loads of camera angles, and the cutting between long views and close ups of Jamal's facial expressions and hand gestures to the others, Heard's fingering and Israel's cymbals really adds to the live jazz experience.
A sorely underexposed figure and a major influence on Miles Davis, pianist Ahmad Jamal isn't generally ranked among the all-time giants of jazz, but he impressed fellow musicians and record buyers alike with his innovative, minimalist approach.

This is the fifth and now final volume in our survey of orchestral works by the Polish composer Witold Lutosławski. Gramophone wrote of a previous volume in the series (CHSA5106) that it ‘offers a broad view of Lutosławski’s creative profile, which the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Edward Gardner fleshes out with playing that is as polished as it is animated, and alert to the individuality of Lutosławski’s musical vocabulary and mode of expression’.

This performance by pianist Ahmad Jamal was recorded at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France in 1981 and features such songs as "My Funny Valentine" and "Dolphin Dance."
One of the most individualistic pianists, composers, and arrangers of his generation, Ahmad Jamal's disciplined technique and minimalist style had a huge impact on trumpeter Miles Davis, and Jamal is often cited as contributing to the development of cool jazz throughout the 1950s.

Marc-Antoine Charpentier's (1643-1704) deeply soulful vocal works are among the most immediately appealing pieces of the middle Baroque. He had a gift for grateful, lyrical vocal writing that's expressively expansive and avoids the patterned clichés that sometimes hobble music of that era. This collection features a variety of works, including songs, a cantata, and a short opera-like scene in the form of a motet, Epithalium Carpenterij, that's quite unlike anything else in the musical repertoire. It's a wickedly funny tombeau, or musical memorial tribute, which Charpentier writes in his own honor…

This CD contains some interesting material not found elsewhere. Recorded live at Palace of Festivals Theatre in Cannes, France in January 1981 and January 1983, the disc features Metheny, Gary Burton, the Heath Brothers, Ahmad Jamal, and the Hum Trio.