"It's a pleasure to be here" says Stan Getz, surveying the Californian landscape from the open-air stage he's performing on. "It's different to the dives I play in." And it clearly inspired this famously uncompromising saxophonist in the performance that's captured on this DVD-Video.The first set is chiefly made up of material by pianist Jim McNeely. who writes with a fine melodic touch, and it sets the great cool saxophonist off into a series of beautifully-shaped improvisations that will repay many viewings and listenings. Stan`s quartet also includes a scintillating rhythm team is bassist Marc Johnson, who had come from working with Bill Evans in the pianist's last trio, and drummer Victor Lewis…
This is our all-time best seller. Selected ‘Jazz Album of the Week’ in the New York Times and on numerous ‘Best Recordings of the Year’ lists upon its original release, these live recordings from Carnegie Hall and Syracuse, New York, are now remastered and repackaged and include additional, previously unreleased Dolphy performances of Gunther Schuller’s Third Stream masterpiece Variants on a Theme by Monk. An incredible sampling of Dolphy’s artistry from ’62 to ’63, in action with his own quartet, in contemporary chamber music settings created for him by Schuller and in the heat of an all-star jam session on “Donna Lee”… Dolphy was never more brilliant.
The Vintage Caravan are a mystery. »Arrival«, the third full-length from this Icelandic trio implies a maturity worthy of any band that has been on the road for some decades and enjoyed their share of smoked-filled seedy backstage rooms reeking of stale beer. A relaxed rocker like ‘Winter Queen’, with its perfectly-timed build-up and meticulous solos speaks of a long-experienced songwriter worth his salt. The blues-soaked ‘Monolith’ is as cleverly assembled as the percussion-driven heavyweight ‘Last Day Of Light’ or the shapeshifting semi-ballad, half-groove monster ‘Eclipsed’, or the whirling psychedelic trip offered by ‘Babylon’. The hand of a masterful composer can clearly be seen at work in each and every of the diverse songs featured on »Arrival« combined with a rare musicality on the instrumental and vocal side that can easily match those rock giants of the 70's. Yet that hand belongs to a kid or rather kids barely out of their teens.