Undaunted

Life is hard. We often find ourselves walking through stories that don't feel like they should be ours. And yet here we are. We wonder where our good God is in the midst of it.

Artemisia Gentileschi was deemed the first woman to earn a living from art but was her work of fantasies of revenge the result of a troubled early life? The darling of feminist French historians, she triumphed in the early 17th century, an era dominated by masters like Rubens and Caravaggio and has since inspired three best-selling novels and a film.

Don't let anyone crush your dreams! Whatever you want to achieve, no matter how hard it might seem, you owe it to yourself to read this book.

For his third and final Columbia CD, young trumpeter Marlon Jordan (21 at the time) still sounded pretty derivative of inspiration Wynton Marsalis and Miles Davis. His hard bop quintet (which also includes tenor saxophonist Tim Warfield, the brilliant pianist Eric Reed, bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Troy Davis) is heard performing six of the trumpeter's originals, plus John Coltrane's "Village Blues," with spirit and swing, although not many original ideas. Jordan was one of the youngest of the Young Lions but, even in the late 1990s, he has still plenty of unrealized potential. A good but not essential outing. ~ AllMusic Review by Scott Yanow