Richard Bona

Considered by many in the jazz world as the natural heir to the throne of the late great Jaco Pastorius, Cameroon-born bassist and vocalist Richard Bona is so well-known for his incredible work as a studio sideman (Joe Zawinal, Regina Carter, Bob James, etc) and two-year stint as musical director for Harry Belafonte that it's easy to overlook his prodigious solo output since the late '90s. Rather than release a safe greatest hits type collection, Decca had the capital idea to follow his Grammy nominated disc Tiki with a high energy, hour-plus live album that captures a batch of his most compelling, rhythmically overjoyed tracks in the habitat where they best come to life. The unique twist is that while Bona loves being on-stage, he's not a fan of making live recordings. So his deal was telling his board guy not to inform him of which performance he was recording to use for the album.

Richard Thompson is the sort of artist destined to be a cherished cult item rather than a bona fide star, which at the dawn of the 21th century puts him in an uncomfortable place in the music industry – being able to reliably sell 100,000 copies of an album makes you too small for a major label, no matter how long they've kept you on the roster. In 2000, after a dozen years with Capitol Records, Thompson's contract was not renewed, and 2003's The Old Kit Bag found him recording for an independent for the first time since 1985. Creatively, this actually turns out to be a good thing; after the periodically excessive and self-conscious production Mitchell Froom imposed on nearly all of Thompson's releases for Capitol, 1999's Mock Tudor (produced by Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf) found Thompson going for a more lean and live sound, and with John Chelew at the controls, Thompson follows suit on The Old Kit Bag. Cut in a straightforward and stripped-down manner, with just bassist Danny Thompson, drummer Michael Jerome, and harmony vocalist Judith Owen along for company, The Old Kit Bag captures Thompson in spare but sympathetic circumstances; the performances are strong and confident, without a note or gesture wasted, and Thompson's interplay with his rhythm section is nothing short of superb.

Hickox has a wonderful feel for this music…In short I would put Hickox at the top of the list… Seasoned collectors may well have the major Haydn masses well covered, but if you want the less-known early works, along with interesting fillers, all superbly done and neatly put in a single box, you’ll want this as well. There is splendid music here, full of vitality as only Haydn could express it.

–American Record Guide

This version of the Zawinul Syndicate could swing harder than any Zawinul-led unit since the heyday of Weather Report, as this two-CD set – taken from three concerts in Berlin and Trier, Germany – triumphantly illustrates. Small wonder, for the lineup of the Syndicate looks almost like a Weather Report alumni gathering, with Zawinul, the brilliant percussionist Manolo Badrena from the 1977 Heavy Weather band, and bassist Victor Bailey, from the great '80s global-funk edition forming a quorum, with Paco Sery on drums and Gary Poulson on guitar filling out the ranks.