Julian Jenkins

This seven-CD box set features 95 tracks from legendary drummer Max Roach's small group, consisting of the 1956-1960 recordings for Emarcy and Mercury Records, as these noteworthy sessions also represent the drummer's post Max Roach-Clifford Brown Quintet output. In 1956 the jazz world witnessed the tragic and untimely deaths of the great trumpeter Clifford Brown and pianist Ritchie Powell. Within these seven CDs, we find Roach maintaining his assault on jazz along with trumpeter Kenny Dorham, pianist Ray Bryant, and the drummer's bandmates from the Clifford Brown years, tenor saxophone giant Sonny Rollins and bassist George Morrow.

“Electric Miles” celebrates the music of the early electric period of Miles Davis with big band arrangements of classics from “Bitches Brew”, “On the Corner”, “Jack Johnson” and “In a Silent Way”. Trumpeters Tim Hagans and Clay Jenkins are featured as the “Miles” voice with Dave Liebman appearing on “Black Satin” and “Yesternow”. Also featuring trombonist Michael Davis, Pillow on alto sax/alto flute; the band is powered by the rhythm section of drummer Jared Schonig and bassist Chuck Bergeron. This band is full of NYC seasoned pros and peppered with up and coming musicians.

Matt Haimovitz’s multi-faceted cello knocks down musical boundaries while scaling emotions from darkness to joy in Cello JAZZ, a wide-ranging playlist featuring some of Haimovitz’s hottest collaborators. Classics like Billy Strayhorn’s haunting Blood Count, George Gershwin’s languid Liza, and Miles Davis’s bebop Half Nelson are reborn in inventive arrangements by modern master David Sanford, who contributes his own big band cello concerto, Scherzo Grosso, and the intense Seventh Avenue Kaddish, a solo tour-de-force. Piazzolla’s Le Grand Tango and DJ Olive’s dreamy Trans resonate alongside the “brilliantly inventive” (The New York Times) AKOKA, with stellar clarinetist David Krakauer, and the jubilant musical playground of Aaron Jay Kernis’s First Club Date. Peak bliss is unlocked with two John McLaughlin tracks from the Grammy-nominated Meeting of the Spirits, with Haimovitz’s maverick band of cello warriors, Uccello.