“This very special period made me think and put a lot of things into perspective. I said to myself, finished the superfluous, if this is to be my last album, I do not want to put anything unnecessary, the watchword is therefore: Straight to the essential! Hence the title of this album ”.
Dancer, actor, and singer Fred Astaire worked steadily in various entertainment media during nine decades of the 20th century. The most celebrated dancer in the history of film, with appearances in 31 movie musicals between 1933 and 1968 (and a special Academy Award in recognition of his accomplishments in them), Astaire also danced on-stage and on television (garnering two Emmy Awards in the process), and he even treated listening audiences to his accomplished tap dancing on records and on his own radio series. He appeared in another eight non-musical feature films and on numerous television programs, resulting in an Academy Award nomination and a third Emmy Award as an actor. His light tenor voice and smooth, conversational phrasing made him an ideal interpreter for the major songwriters of his era, and he introduced dozens of pop standards, many of them written expressly for him, by such composers as Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Burton Lane, Frank Loesser, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter, Arthur Schwartz, Harry Warren, and Vincent Youmans.
During the war against advanced colo-rectal cancer (from 2006), which included two primary tumors and two recurrences, Fred Ho, hammered by massive chemo and radiation, found inspiration in the fight for his life from watching movies of The Greatest, Muhammad Ali. Ali s bold, militant, defiant and spirited resistance to the forces of American racism, combined with his élan, grace and humor (both poetical and personal), his indisputable athletic abilities and genius, and the inspiration to the world s peoples (especially the oppressed) and their embrace of him, served as constant inspiration to Fred Ho. During one of his recovery periods, Ho decided to compose a work for his Green Monster Big Band to honor The Greatest.
Born out of Eugene Chadbourne's Twins band concepts from the 70s, which included over time saxophonist Bruce Ackley, and guitarists Henry Kaiser, and Fred Frith; fast forward to 2018 as Ackley & Frith return to the concept with Henry Kaiser and saxophonist Aram Shelton to revisit the original approach through pieces by those artists plus Steve Lacy, Eugene Chadbourne, and John Zorn.
Debut 1976 album by Catalan jazz-rock group Secta Sònica, a classic of the so-called 'Rock Laietà' genre. Blend of classic jazz-rock with Mediterranean elements and Catalan folk, this first album is still quite a bit progressive-sounding, even symphonic at times, with some good use of electric guitars.