Octopussy

The work of the Catalan pianist Sergi Sirvent, despite the organizational complexity that entails such a wide formation, is a real delight from beginning to end. Inferències and the group that develops it, is an octet conformed by a cast of musicians coming from diverse musical areas of the Barcelona scene. A project to publicize the compositional concerns in large format of one of the most interesting musicians and creators that currently exist in the national jazz scene.

With the arrival of Delta Lady: The Rita Coolidge Anthology, one can only remark: what took so long? No other singer – not Maria Muldaur, Bette Midler, Bonnie Bramlett, Carly Simon, or Linda Ronstadt – more perfectly embodied the wide range of changes that popular music underwent from the late '60s through the mid-'80s, and continues to seek new means of expression today. This two-disc anthology on Hip-O offers the first complete portrait of this complex and multivalent talent on CD (though a box set would have been nice). Rita Coolidge scored her first chart hit with friend Donna Weiss' "Turn Around and Love You" in 1969. That song earned her a studio spot where she fell in with Delaney & Bonnie, Leon Russell, and a huge cast of musicians. Being a background vocalist on Delaney & Bonnie's classic Accept No Substitute earned her a place on Russell and Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs & Englishmen revue and the rest is history, including a handful of chart hits and guest appearances that stagger the mind.