Monterey Festival

Dizzy Gillespie - A Musical Safari: Live At The 1961 Monterey Jazz Festival (2015) {Solar Records 4569957}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 501 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 186 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 135 Mb | 5% repair rar | 24bit remastered
© 1961, 2015 Solar Records | 4569957
Jazz / Afro-Cuban Jazz / Bop / Bossa Nova / Trumpet

This edition presents, for the first time ever on CD, Dizzy Gillespie's complete performance at the 1961 Monterey Jazz Festival. While humorously introduced by Diz as “A Musical Safari”, the set is a mixture of the repertoire the quintet was playing during that period, including an excursion into the realm of bossa nova. The quintet features the wonderful Leo Wright and Argentinean pianist Lalo Schifrin, as well as singer Joe Carroll on one track.

In 1997, bandleader/arranger Gerald Wilson was commissioned by the Monterey Jazz Festival to write an original piece to be performed at that year's festival. Wilson's goal was to compose a melody that the audience would leave the venue singing to themselves. He succeeded by casting his "Theme for Monterey" in five different styles, with his big band interpreting the theme in a variety of moods – as a ballad, a Latin romp, a medium-tempo piece and a shouting conclusion. His memorable five-part suite has solos by his son, guitarist Anthony Wilson, trumpeter Oscar Brashear, pianist Brian O'Rourke, trombonist George Bohanon, trumpeter Carl Saunders, Randall Willis on tenor, and others. Also on this CD are a couple pieces commissioned by the Ira and Leonore Gershwin Foundation, reworkings of "Summertime" and "Anthropology."

Woody Herman - Woody and Friends, Monterey Jazz Festival 1979
Vinyl Rip in 24-Bit/96-kHz | FLAC tracks | Full Scan Covers | MU, RS | 987 MB 3% recovery
1979 | Genre: Jazz | Label: Concord Jazz | CJ-170 | US pressing
Rated 4 out of 5 star by AllMusic Guide

Recorded live at the 1979 Monterey Jazz Festival, Herman and his Young Thundering Herd welcomed trumpeters Woody Shaw and Dizzy Gillespie and trombonist Slide Hampton to the bandstand for "Woody'n You" and "Manteca," and featured guest Stan Getz on a typically beautiful rendition of "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?" The other side of the original LP finds the Herd sounding in spirited form on four standards with baritonist Gary Smulyan and tenor saxophonist Frank Tiberi (who doubles on bassoon during "Caravan") taking solo honors.

(Scott Yanow - AllMusic Guide)

Charles Mingus - Music Written for Monterey, 1965, Not heard…played in its entirety at UCLA, September 25, 1965 (2006)
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 462 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 212 Mb | Artwork | 5% repair rar
© 1965, 2006 Sue Mingus Music / Sunnyside Communications | 984 275-9
Jazz / Post Bop / Progressive Jazz

The back story behind this concert CD is that, in September 1965, Charles Mingus performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival. He had done so triumphantly well the year before, however, Mingus' 1965 set was inexplicably cut short at a half-hour (Mingus himself claims 20 minutes) and so the material he had planned for the event, much of it newly composed, was instead unreeled at UCLA a week later. Mingus later pressed a couple hundred copies of the performance into a self-released two-LP set, but the master tape was hence destroyed and the album basically forgotten until its release on CD by Mingus' widow Sue in 2006.