Koch Style

Grammy Award-winning acoustic guitarist Earl Klugh is releasing a new ensemble recording, The Spice of Life, April 29th, on Koch Records. The album is being described as Klugh's “first full-production release in nine years,” and is the follow-up to 2005’s Naked Guitar, which brought Klugh his eleventh career Grammy nomination. On the album, Klugh reinterprets four of his favorite standards and longtime collaborator Don Sebesky contributes five orchestral arrangements, including Klugh’s boyhood favorite “Canadian Sunset”; his reinterpretation of the Thelonious Monk classic, “Bye Ya”; and a revival of “C’est Si Bon.” Flutist Hubert Laws guests, and composer Eddie Horst arranges the chamber-group string accompaniment on the Klugh original “Heart of My Life.” The Spice of Life also features several Klugh originals. The project is said to incorporate all of the veteran instrumentalist's musical influences, from pop and soul to jazz and gospel, as well as different musical settings.

Elvin Jones may have established himself as one of the greatest drummers of all time, but equally important to him was his nurturing of young musicians. His Jazz Machine opened the door to several upcoming musicians, including Delfeayo Marsalis, Antoine Roney and Ravi Coltrane. He characteristically took delight in their playing, thus forging an emphatic bond. His attitude also served to enrich the music of the band.

Hot on the heels of his commercial breakthrough Touchdown, which contained the monster hit "Angela (Theme from Taxi)," Bob James teamed up with acoustic guitarist Earl Klugh for the first of two hit duet albums. One on One is not strictly a duet side, however. The pair is accompanied by a band of crack studio types that includes James' former CTI mates acoustic bassist Ron Carter and drummer Harvey Mason and a host of others as well as string and woodwinds sections. The fare is light, breezy, and barely there in places. Out of these sessions came "The Afterglow," which lit up the charts right after "Angela" did, making James the hottest jazz commodity on the scene.

Heads is the fifth album by jazz musician Bob James. It was his first album released on his newly formed Tappan Zee label, which was distributed at the time by Columbia Records.

Oratorios were to become Handelís favorite form of composition from the late 1730ís onward, and of the impressive series of works written during the last two decades of his life the oratorio Judas Maccabaeus was the most successful of this genre, eclipsing even The Messiah in popularity. Handel and librettist Reverend Thomas Morell drew upon the story of the revolt of the Israelites in 168 B.C. against the decree of Antiochus IV forbidding the practice of their religion, focusing on Judas Maccabaeus, the fearless supreme commander in the battle for freedom.

Pimpinone, TWV 21:15, is a comic opera by the German composer Georg Philipp Telemann with a libretto by Johann Philipp Praetorius. Its full title is Die Ungleiche Heirat zwischen Vespetta und Pimpinone oder Das herrsch-süchtige Camer Mägden (The Unequal Marriage Between Vespetta and Pimpinone or The Domineering Chambermaid). The work is described as a Lustiges Zwischenspiel ("comic intermezzo") in three parts. It was first performed at the Theater am Gänsemarkt, Hamburg on 27 September 1725 as light relief between the acts of Telemann's adaptation of Handel's opera seria Tamerlano. Pimpinone was highly successful and pointed the way forward to later intermezzi, particularly Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's La serva padrona.

Urban Flamingo features James with his Michigan-based quintet of bassist Al Turner, drummer Ron Otis, guitarist Perry Hughes and saxophonist David McMurray. The disc opens with "Choose Me," which has James jamming over the chord changes of a funky blues. While the primarily electric instrumentation and McMurray's often syrupy saxophone playing will undoubtedly turn off mainstream-minded listeners, they will appeal to those who are looking for a pop or R&B-oriented jazz sound.

The idea of an afterlife has fired imaginations across cultures for millennia and is one of the earliest belief systems in recorded history. It is fascinating to consider that a type of identity or stream of consciousness might exist in the absence of the physical body.