Body Count 1992

With the Compact Jazz series offering plenty of fine single-artist starter discs, there should be no hesitation in picking up this multi-artist overview for that jazz neophyte friend. As usual, the price is right and the selection generous. Covering the '50s, '60s, and '70s, the disc includes both vocal and instrumental tracks from the likes of Sarah Vaughan, Bill Evans, Dinah Washington, Erroll Garner, Stan Getz, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday.

Neil Sparkes is a poet, visual artist, and musician whose work resonates through both literary and popular cultural worlds. As poet and performer, Sparkes has read and performed widely in the U.K. and Europe at clubs, festivals, colleges and universities where he also lectures. Widely known as vocalist and percussionist with Transglobal UnderGround he toured the world from 1992 to 1996, and appeared on all of TGU’s commercially successful albums for Nation Records and Sony. A long term commitment to synthesising his multi-medic talents led to the formation of Neils’ latest group Temple Of Sound, alongside TGU founder Count Dubulah.

This is a grand, satisfying performance on almost every count. Its stature allows me for the moment to put aside the baggage of all earlier recordings and assess it on its own merits alone. In the first place, following on his successful Rheingold (Decca, 11/95), Dohnanyi conducts a well-paced, thought-through reading that at once creates dramatic excitement and attends to the longer view. From the opening storm right through to the Magic Fire Music there’s a welcome sense of forward movement everywhere, except in the middle of Act 2 where in places Dohnanyi slows down inordinately, allowing the score to become momentarily becalmed.

An acclaimed singer/songwriter whose literate work flirted with everything from acoustic folk to rockabilly to straight-ahead country, John Prine was born October 10, 1946, in Maywood, IL. Raised by parents firmly rooted in their rural Kentucky background, at age 14 Prine began learning to play the guitar from his older brother while taking inspiration from his grandfather, who had played with Merle Travis. After a two-year tenure in the U.S. Army, Prine became a fixture on the Chicago folk music scene in the late '60s, befriending another young performer named Steve Goodman…