Terrific, limited edition box set collecting all the recordings made by this one of a like group of superstar musicians including: Art Farmer, Phil Woods, Zoot Sims, Curtis Fuller, Phil Woods, Freddie Hubbard, Benny Golson, Art Blakey, and Hank Jones. The set includes 5 CDs covering all of his 1959-60 studio and 1961 live Mercury sessions, as well as an earlier set from 1956 for ABC-Paramount and a 1961 date for Impulse. Also includes an exhaustive essay by Brian Priestley and a complete discography, as well as many rare photographs by Chuck Stewart.
This program offers three lively, colorful, and captivating orchestral works by two United States composers, born almost a century apart. These pieces exhibit the fruitful exchange and flow of musical material between North and South America that has long played a role in popular music, apparent not only in commercial song and dance music using Latin American melodies and rhythms but also in early jazz and blues where tango rhythms are so often heard, as in W. C. Handy's St. Louis Blues. And both Gottschalk in the 1850s, close to the beginning of a creative American musical tradition, and Gould in the 1950s, when such a tradition had flowered considerably, show a combination of seriousness of approach with a popular touch.
First class fusion from guitarist Russ Freeman and company. Russ always uses the heavy hitters on the L.A. session scene, and Patti Austin contributes one vocal track.
Presumably the Bad Plus wanted to make a very specific statement when they titled this album Prog. Although there is no confusing its music for what has typically passed for progressive jazz or progressive rock in decades past, Prog embodies the true meaning of the word: it takes music forward - not just theirs, but music itself. How they do that is relatively simple, despite the music's complexity: they go where they want to go, where others have yet even to consider going. That means throwing out conventional notions of what a jazz piano trio can and should do. That the Bad Plus is comprised of three exemplary musicians - pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson and drummer David King - is never in doubt. Their chops are on display at every turn - and there are many turns, unexpected and exhilarating ones that produce seismic shifts without losing focus…