The Invitations

The final evening of their 2003 summer tour found the Allman Brothers planning a special night on the friendly turf of Raleigh, NC, wrapping up yet another road trip with invitations to Susan Tedeschi, Karl Denson, and truly serious jazzbo Branford Marsalis to join the group on-stage. It was all captured by the state-of-the-digital-arts folks at Instant Live, who burn CDs of the shows and make them available to concertgoers who still have a few extra green ones in their pockets by evening's end. On the sprawling three-CD set documenting these particular proceedings, there is indeed some fine music, although in his Allmans premiere appearance Marsalis doesn't fare as well as jam band-friendly Denson; the sax-blowing Marsalis brother (heard on "Dreams" and "Whipping Post") seems shoehorned between the guitars and strains a bit over the loud rock groove.

The Hillbilly Hellcats play a heavy rockabilly. The life and sounds of the nineties come crashing into those of the fifties in this modern Rockabilly trio. Coming from a state known for it's tie-dyed bands, Colorado's Hillbilly Hellcats tell stories of skateboards and hippies as well as white trash, whiskey and trailer parks. Chuck Hughes and Lance Bakemeyer formed Hillbilly Hellcats in Denver, 1993. They have released several albums and singles. Their touring has taken them to 16 countries and 40 States. Since 2001, their music has appeared over 3500 times in TV and movies. They have over 2 million streams on Spotify.

On this double CD release we find Shakatak's Bill Sharpe teaming up with Don Grusin, Alex Acuna and Paulinho da Costa et al for a Latin Jazz album from 1999, which also features Jeffrey Osborne on vocals on Light On My Life. Coupled with a solo piano album from 2006 of Bill’s favourite Shakatak tracks from the band’s first 25 years.

This CD introduces to disc the newly formed Florestan Trio comprising Susan Tomes, Anthony Marwood and Richard Lester, all now-familiar and highly respected artists after their many earlier recordings, both as members of other ensembles and as soloists. Miss Tomes and Mr Lester were, of course, members of the now-disbanded piano quartet Domus (which was joined by Mr Marwood in its last, award-winning recording of the two Fauré Piano Quintets on CDA66766).