Mary Calmes Mine

Just over 50 years have passed since 22-year-old Mary Stallings established herself as the finest new voice in jazz with the release of Cal Tjader Plays, Mary Stallings Sings. Since then, Stallings has released fewer albums than the average person has fingers, the earliest dating to 1990. Tempting as it is to ruminate over what could have been, it’s better to celebrate the fact that she has been steadily active throughout the past two decades and remains, at 72, the consummate jazz singer.

This exceptional recording gathers the finest young vocal talents in a unique program of songs by Sullivan, many of them very rarely recorded. Currently widely acclaimed for key operatic title roles in the UK and abroad, the ""deeply touching, outstanding"" (The Guardian)soprano Mary Bevan, the ""elegant yet intense, impeccable"" (The Guardian) tenor Ben Johnson, and the ""increasingly impressive"" (The Financial Times) bass-baritone Ashley Riches - who here appears on Chandos for the first time - span fifty years of Arthur Sullivan's large non-operatic vocal output. They are accompanied by the UK pianist David Owen Norris, who regularly appears in highly praised concerto performances at the BBC Proms. This album continues to celebrate the Shakespeare anniversary but also presents a wide variety of poets, drawing on texts from a vast range of sources, through the voices of today's greatest rising stars.

Lots of funky keys and choppy sax passages - on this sweet Japanese fusion session headed up by reedman Kohsuke Mine! Mine plays both soprano and tenor on the record, and it's got a feel that's halfway between some of the harder jamming European fusion sides of the 70s - like mid 70s electric groovers on MPS - and some of the more cosmic Japanese sides of the same time - those more tripped-out records that had a relaxed, soulful approach to the music. The group also features Mikio Masuda on some great keyboards, plus Hiroshi Yasukawa on guitar - and the album's got 4 long tracks - each over 10 minutes long.

A high-energy, modal/spiritual, face-melter of a jazz record that packs a mighty wallop. Fans of McCoy Tyner’s early 70s Milestone records will go bonkers over this. Kohsuke Mine handles both tenor and soprano sax and is the composer of all five mid-to-long tracks on ‘Daguri’. He’s joined by Hideo Miyata (tenor sax), Fumio Itabashi (piano), Hideaki Mochizuki (bass) and Hiroshi Murakami (drums).