Venerable jazz bassist and session musician of choice, Buster Williams steers this thoroughly swinging quartet through a set of vibrant standards and original compositions along with an ace front line consisting of pianist Mulgrew Miller and vibist Steve Nelson. Recorded live in 1999 at the Montreux Jazz Festival, the bassist once again exhibits his seasoned musical persona via fluent lines, limber soloing, and a comprehensive sense of swing. Meanwhile, Nelson and Miller share most of the soloing opportunities as they consistently demonstrate a keen harmonic relationship atop drummer Carl Allen's masterstrokes and the leader's sinewy walking bass patterns.
Black Friday/Record Store Day Exclusive. Limited to 2000 copies worldwide. Live At The Playboy Jazz Festival features the entire set that Dexter Gordon and his working band recorded at the Hollywood Bowl for the Playboy Jazz Festival in 1982, with guest vibes on two tracks by Milt Jackson. This Record Store Day Black Friday exclusive features two previously unreleased tracks (Bag's Groove & The Blues) and two tracks ("Fried Bananas" and "You've Changed") in their complete unedited form to round out the full set.
Recorded live in March 2011 at the Bern Jazz Festival, this record showcases two of Europe's greatest jazz artists and innovators perform as a duo. Legendary drummer Kenny Clarke compared Jean-Luc Ponty to Dizzy Gillespie. Fellow violinist Stuff Smith marveled, "He plays violin like Coltrane plays saxophone." Born in 1942, the French violinist transported jazz violin playing into the world of modern jazz.
This double album matches and mixes together four masterful musicians: pianist Oscar Peterson, guitarist Joe Pass, bassist Niels Pedersen and harmonica great Toots Thielemans. Together they perform O.P.'s "City Lights" and ten veteran standards with creativity, wit and solid swing. There are a few miraculous moments as one would expect from musicians of this caliber and the results are generally quite memorable.
The Dave Brubeck Quartet was always a popular addition to the many internationally famous Jazz Musicians who appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival. Over time Brubeck made a number of appearances and These recordings date from concerts which were performed in front of a rapturous audiences in Freebody Park, Newport, Rhode Island on the 17th July 1955, 3rd of July 1958, 5th July 1959 and 7th July 1963. In the 1950s Brubeck was considered the darling of the “Cocktail Set” and no soiree was deemed complete without a background of his innovative interpretations of topical jazz themes and time signatures as evidenced in his most popular recording “Take Five”.
Japanese edition with 1 more track (Traveling), different running order and track durations. This CD features the revived Modern Jazz Quartet during their 30th year (counting a seven-year "vacation"), playing some of their usual repertoire – such as "Django," "The Cylinder," and "Bags' Groove," which for some reason was renamed "Bags' New Groove" – before an appreciative audience at the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival. In reality, this release adds little to the MJQ's legacy, since all of the songs but vibraphonist Milt Jackson's "Monterey Mist" had been recorded before (some of them many times), but it does show that the band still had its enthusiasm and the ability to make the veteran material sound fresh and swinging.
Generally disregarded by jazz purists, Roy Ayers' Live At the Montreux Jazz Festival is nevertheless a thoroughly engaging set of funky jazz fusion. In fact, the album is one of the most sampled jazz records in hip-hop. Loops of this performance of "Everybody Loves the Sunshine" have appeared on tracks by A Tribe Called Quest, Brand Nubian, and several others. The original grooves on this album are just as funky as those the hip-hop artists have derived from it. In fact, Ayers is probably funkier and looser than the musicians that borrowed from him several years later. Live At the Montreux Jazz Festival is one of the core recordings of acid jazz, "rare grooves," and jazz hip-hop; it's a record that sounds better 20 years after its release than it did when it first appeared.