Mick Goodrick

Marco Pieri, born in 1966, picked up musical instruments very early thanks to his father and his love for the Beatles (we are in 1973/74). He plays bass, harmonica, and guitar, and had his first live experience at age 11 with a quintet where his brother (Max Pieri) also played, performing original songs and covers of Neil Young.

This expansive four-disc anthology essentially covers the recorded history of the guitar in the 20th century, beginning with the ragtime banjo that set the table for the role of the guitar in a jazz setting in the early 1900s, and then touching all the bases clear through to the post-postmodern possibilities of the instrument in the 21st century. Don't let the subtitle throw you, though, because Progressions: 100 Years of Jazz Guitar interprets jazz guitar in the broadest of strokes, as it includes not only pantheon jazz players like Eddie Lang, Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Les Paul, Wes Montgomery, and John McLaughlin but also provides an uncommon sweep by featuring Hawaiian stylists Roy Smeck and Sol Hoopii; Western swing aces Leon McAuliffe and Eldon Shamblin; country jazzman Hank Garland; rock virtuosos Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, and Jeff Beck; fusion funksters Larry Carlton, Al DiMeola, and Mike Stein; and hard to classify avant-garde players like Derek Bailey, Sonny Sharrock, James Blood Ulmer, and Marc Ribot.

Marco Pieri, born in 1966, picked up musical instruments very early thanks to his father and his love for the Beatles (we are in 1973/74). He plays bass, harmonica, and guitar, and had his first live experience at age 11 with a quintet where his brother (Max Pieri) also played, performing original songs and covers of Neil Young.

The singular catalog of the great pianist/composer Carla Bley has been celebrated and performed for decades. She has not only performed her unique compositions in her own star-studded bands but has had them canonized by such legendary artists as Gary Burton and Paul Bley.

Michael Gibbs And The NDR Bigband s Back In The Days is a never before released audiophile recording of this great jazz composer and arranger in a program of original modern Jazz plus three specially arranged classics recorded in separate sessions in 1995, 2002 and 2003. The legendary 'Brit-jazz' composer and arranger Michael Gibbs was born in 1937 in Zimbabwe and was originally a trombonist as well. Gibbs began to concentrate on writing and arranging because performing solos terrified him! Starting in the late 60s, he recorded a series of highly acclaimed and influential albums featuring many of the most prominent British-based Jazz players who, like Michael, were beginning to flirt with Jazz/Rock. Since the 80s, he has mostly done arrangements and orchestrations for major names such as Joni Mitchell, Pat Metheny, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Whitney Houston, Peter Gabriel, and Sister Sledge among many others, while too infrequently recording his own music.

Bassist Bruno Raberg performs seven of his originals with his six-horn nonet and leads his band through a pair of coherent free improvisations ("Sculpture IV" and "Sculpture V") on this complex but very listenable set. While Raberg is originally from Sweden, he currently lives in Boston. His nonet is full of notable players, including guitarist Mick Goodrick, trumpeter Phil Grenadier, and saxophonist Donny McCaslin.