Tim Ries Universal Spirits

The East Gipsy Band is a great initiative in combining Roma music tradition and jazz with leading Hungarian Roma musicians. This sensational group has already toured Canada and the United States. They have been a huge success at the legendary Blue Note in New York and at the Detroit Jazz Festival.

Tim Ries to release long awaited album featuring Jack DeJohnette, Bill Frisell, Gregoire Maret, James Genus, Larry Goldings.

Best known as the saxist for The Rolling Stones, Tim Ries also has a secret life as a jazz musician, showing up on albums with the likes of Jack DeJohnette, Bob Belden and John Patitucci. He released a clever jazzing up of Stones tunes a number of years ago, but this latest release has him jumping in with both feet in terms of compositions and teammates.

With more than 50 musical releases and a Grammy nomination, Shujaat Husain Khan is perhaps the greatest North Indian classical musician of his generation. He belongs to the Imdad Khan gharana (tradition) of the sitar (lute) and is the seventh in the unbroken line from his family that has produced many musical masters. His style known as the gayaki ang, is imitative of the subtleties of the human voice. Shujaat Khans’ openness to collaborating with artists of all genres of music has produced some enormously successful.

'Tribute to Maynard Ferguson' presents catchy jazz standards and original MF big band arrangements presented by the Jazzaar Festival Big Band directed by Fritz K Renold. Special guests are Peter Erskine and Wayne Bergeron, together with four other alumni of the Maynard Ferguson Big Band and two of the UK's top lead trumpeters.

Jazz drummer Steve Davis was born in Santa Barbara, California in 1958. Following the advice of drumset teacher Alan Dawson, Steve moved to New York City in the early 1980s to begin his career as a jazz drummer. Throughout the 1980s Steve built up a reputation in the New York scene, playing and recording with many big names.

Maria Schneider is widely thought of as a potentially great arranger who is following in the footsteps of Gil Evans (her main inspiration), George Russell, and Bob Brookmeyer. This CD, Coming About (first released in 1996), is re-mastered and re-released with a fresh new design.