Best Tango 100

Two of vibraphonist Gary Burton's albums from 1969-1970 are reissued in full on this single CD. Burton teams up with pianist Keith Jarrett for five numbers (including four of Jarrett's originals) in 1970, using a quintet that also features guitarist Sam Brown, bassist Steve Swallow, and drummer Bill Goodwin. The other session has more of an avant-country flavor, with Burton, Swallow, and Goodwin joined by guitarist Jerry Hahn and violinist Richard Greene; Michael Gibbs and Swallow contributed most of the obscurities. Burton was at his most explorative during this period, which is why he can be considered one of the pioneers of fusion (although his music never really fit into a tight category). This is excellent music that mostly still sounds fresh.

One of the most musical drummers in jazz asks two mainstays from Wayne Shorter's masterfully cerebral quartet to join him to incredibly profound results. The least you will enjoy Music We Are is on first listen; each time you hear it, new facets of tone, harmony, melody and inventive ensemble interaction are revealed. Some of the songs, such as DeJohnette's "Tango African" and Perez's "White," feature creative overdubs of electric and acoustic instrumentation (including DeJohnette's mellotron on "Tango"). Others are extraordinary group improvisations, like the alert, attenuated ballad, "Earth Prayer," which has added resonance when you learn the trio recorded much of this album while snowbound at DeJohnette's abode in the Catskills. "Earth Speaks" is stunning in its telepathic spontaneity, which shifts not only in tempo but mood, sheathed in Patitucci's gorgeous arco bass.

Gary Burton has had many stellar moments over the years, and in the 1990s, one of his finest achievements was Astor Piazzolla Reunion, a heartfelt tribute to the late Argentinean tango innovator and bandoneon master. Having toured and recorded with Piazzolla in the 1980s, Burton clearly had a strong appreciation of his legacy, and that appreciation comes through in a major way on arrangements of "Tanguedia," "Romance Del Diablo," and other gems by Piazzolla (whose risk-taking approach to tango generated as much controversy in tango circles as Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman, and John Coltrane did in jazz). But as passionately as Burton expresses his love of Piazzolla's distinctive music, the vibist's own identity doesn't become buried or obscured.

On the album Opening, Tord Gustavsen reveals a fresh angle to his particularly unique trio investigations into Scandinavian folk hymns, gospel, chorale and jazz, as he introduces a different voice on bass. With a new fellow-traveller on board and its recording premiere in Lugano's Auditorio Stelio Molo, the trio discovers inspired new ways to interact with each other, using innovative approaches to sound and technique in the process. Made up in equal parts of intricately textured improvisations and understated melodic hooks, the group’s conversations bring an enticing unfamiliarity to the language the Norwegian pianist has developed over almost two decades of collaboration with ECM.

This album by accordionist Richard Galliano is entitled If You Love Me ( L'Hymne à l'Amour ) and it marks the beginning of a significant collaboration with Gary Burton, an outstanding vibes player who, like Galliano, is a musician of extraordinary poetic feeling. The rhythm is made up of the vastly experienced bass player George Mraz and drummer Clarence Penn, one of the best drummers of his generation. In If You Love Me ( L'Hymne à l'Amour ) there are five tracks by the magnificent Argentine composer and bandoneon player Astor Piazzolla: Milonga Is Coming, Triunfal, Soledad, Operation Tango and Romance del Diablo. Besides the splendid melody that gives the CD its title, written by Edith Piaf and Marguerite Monnot, there are Waltz For Debby by Bill Evans, the beautiful theme from the film Il Postino by Louis Bacalov and Para Jobim by Galliano.

Dino Saluzzi & Rosamunde Quartett - Kultrum (1998) {ECM New Series 1638}
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© 1998 ECM Records | ECM 1638 | ECM New Series
Jazz / Classical / Chamber Music / World Music

Argentine composer-performer Dino Saluzzi is a bandoneonista, a master of the button-box accordion that was invented in 19th-century Germany but is best known as the native voice of the tango. Born in 1935, Saluzzi has had a wide variety of musical experience in various genres such as folk, jazz and tango, but his own very individual music defies easy classification, definitely haunted by the wistful soul of tango but perhaps reaching a little further, toward Argentina's native heritage, alloying the sense of longing and nostalgia with exquisite delicacy and understatement.

Various Artists - The Pacific Jazz Piano Trios, Mosaic Select (2005) {3CD Set, Mosaic MS-019 rec 1952-1963}
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© 1952-63, 2005 Mosaic Records / EMI Music | MS-019 / 7243-8-75552-2-8
Jazz / Cool / West Coast Jazz / Piano

This set reinstates a number of important piano recordings made for Pacific Jazz (and in the case of Jimmy Rowles Liberty). Russ Freeman and Rowles were seminal to so much of the important music that emanated from Los Angeles in the '50s and '60s that their achievements would be far too many to list here. Freeman's hard swinging style is featured on 14 tracks made between 1952 and '57. Rowles, an encyclopedic piano maestro, is represented by his rare Liberty album Rare - But Well Done and two Pacific Jazz tracks, made the end of sessions by others.