Mike Azevedo

This disc reissues Dianne Reeves' entire 1982 LP "Welcome to My Love", plus three tracks from 1985's "For Every Heart" and one selection from her days as a vocalist with the band Caldera.

With Wayne Henderson of Crusaders fame handling the production, Caldera showed a great deal of promise on its self-titled 1976 debut album. The Latin jazz-fusion unit isn't afraid to take chances on such imaginative pieces as Jorge Strunz's "El Juguete" and Eduardo del Barrio's "Exaltation" – chances that pay off in a major way. Though one can tell that Caldera's members were well aware of such explorers as Return to Forever, Weather Report, and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, it's also clear that they were major Earth, Wind & Fire fans and had absorbed a wide variety of Latin music. Strunz and del Barrio were hardly the only fusionists who incorporated Latin rhythms in the 1970s – Chick Corea, George Duke, Wayne Shorter, Al DiMeola, and Joe Zawinul were all well aware of the musical innovations of Latinos, but Caldera was unique in the sense that the band represented a real melting pot of Latinos bringing different ideas to the table. And on this LP, those ideas work magnificently.

Dreamer is the fourth and final album by the Jazz fusion group Caldera. For Caldera, the term "Latin music" meant a variety of things – everything from Spanish flamenco and Afro-Cuban salsa to Brazilian samba and Andean music – and on this LP, all of those things successfully interact with jazz, funk, and rock. Like Caldera's three previous Capitol albums, Dreamer went out of print after the band's breakup and now is released on CD only in Japan

Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture "Donald" Byrd II (December 9, 1932 – February 4, 2013) was an American jazz and rhythm & blues trumpeter. A sideman for many other jazz musicians of his generation, Byrd was best known as one of the only bebop jazz musicians who successfully pioneered the funk and soul genres while simultaneously remaining a jazz artist.