The Saint And The Count

The six CDs – seven, if you count the separate, limited-edition bonus disc – housed within the Vault Box (2007) include a trio of otherwise available From the Vault volumes. Each installment houses a (more or less) complete concert, presented in its entirety from very high fidelity multi-track sources. Interestingly, while the first and second sets were issued in fairly rapid succession in the early '90s, it took over a decade-and-a-half before Three from the Vault surfaced.

Jean Renoir and Akira Kurosawa, two of cinema’s greatest directors, transform Maxim Gorky’s classic proletariat play The Lower Depths in their own ways for their own times. Renoir, working amidst the rise of Hitler and the Popular Front in France, had need to take license with the dark nature of Gorky’s source material, softening its bleak outlook. Kurosawa, firmly situated in the postwar world, found little reason for hope. He remained faithful to the original with its focus on the conflict between illusion and reality—a theme he would return to over and over again. Working with their most celebrated actors (Gabin with Renoir; Mifune with Kurosawa), each film offers a unique look at cinematic adaptation—where social conditions and filmmaking styles converge to create unique masterpieces.

'Doc' Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe) is a legendary crime 'mastermind'. He has just been released from prison. He has a new scheme for a million-dollar burglary. He enlists safecracker Louis (Anthony Caruso), reinforcer Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden), experienced driver Gus (recognize James Whitmore) and financial backing by Emmerich (Louis Calhern). Staffing is a problem for legitimate business as well as the nefarious types and a smooth heist becomes fraught with an accumulation of errors that spiral out of control. What the viewer sees is a masterpiece of the "noir" genre with subtle reference to a disaffected urban underground community.

There's no sound like SWING for the holidays! On Underneath the Mistletoe, Glenn Crytzer and his award-winning Orchestra recreate the classic styles of the Jazz Age and Swing Era with nods to Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Count Basie, Jimmie Lunceford, Bix Beiderbecke, Bing Crosby and more. But here's the twist: rather than just recreating arrangements from the vintage masters, Underneath the Mistletoe consists of 9 new arrangements of holiday classics and 11 brand new songs from Crytzer's pen that you'd never know weren't written during the FDR administration. Crytzer (who has been described as "New York's King of Swing" and his all-star line-up of musicians offer 20 new tracks on this holiday collection that they hope will become some of your new perennial favorites.