Robert Matthew

Cactus is their first duo recording, a spontaneous set coming on the heels of 2015's Themes 4 Transmutation, the latter waxed under the drummer's leadership and featuring Shipp, reedist Ras Moshe, and bassist Tyler Mitchell. Also, the sound he gets off the cymbals has a resonance that is beyond deep - it's like swimming in pure vibration." On Cactus, nine spiny and flowering dialogic arms are presented in gorgeous sound, creating a language that stems from bebop, free improvisation and classicism but are of the present and specific to these two musicians.

The long, colorful career of producer Walter Wanger (1894-1968) represents one of Hollywood's greatest untold stories. Married to actress Joan Bennett, he is perhaps best remembered for shooting his wife's lover in a Beverly Hills parking lot and for his involvement with the catastrophic Cleopatra. But Wanger was also an intellectual sophisticate whose astute skills as a producer have received remarkably little attention. A socially conscious movie executive responsible for such film classics as Queen Christina with Greta Garbo, John Ford's Stagecoach, Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent, and Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, he exemplified the figure of the glamorous, independent Hollywood producer.

A critical analysis of the text of Matthew's Gospel includes discussions of its literary style, theology, and historical reliability.