New York Times 6 May

The group was founded in 1977 by bassist John Lindberg, violinist Billy Bang, and guitarist James Emery. Though they initially worked on improvisational playing and on their own compositions, they eventually began taking on commissions, as well as doing arrangements of other jazz musicians' works…

With ensemble vocal jazz, the danger is always that tight and complex harmony writing will come across as too smooth and too sweet – for some reason, chords that sound sharp and bracing when distributed among reed instruments can sound cloying and overly slick when sung by human voices. The vocal/instrumental quartet New York Voices don't avoid that trap entirely on their latest album (and their first as an ensemble in seven years), but they continue to demonstrate their mastery of the genre with a solid program of new and old songs and innovative arrangements. Their take on "Darn That Dream" is startlingly new (and features a fine bass clarinet solo by Bob Mintzer), and the lyrics that group members added to John Coltrane's "Moment's Notice" work very nicely. Not everyone will agree that the world needed a vocal jazz version of Laura Nyro's "Stoned Soul Picnic," but the New York Voices' version is really lots of fun and is sure to bring a nostalgic tear to more than one baby-boomer eye. Apart from a couple of saccharine moments on "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning," A Day Like This is a pleasure from start to finish. Recommended.

This version of Handel's 'Messiah' could quite possibly be feasible today only as a Bernstein reissue. The quest for authenticity has overtaken the performance and recording of early music, and even a conductor recording 'Messiah' without attempting a historically-informed style of performance wouldn't dare introduce the level of revision that Bernstein did for this 1956 recording and the Carnegie Hall performances which preceded it.

A wonderful gift for jazz fans has arrived from Venus Records! Nobody argues that Bill Charlap is one of the most preeminent jazz pianists of his generation. His encyclopedic knowledge of the American Songbook is second to none, and his beautiful touch, amazing skills and imagination make it a pleasure to listen to him at all times. Ken Peplowski, on the other hand, is without a doubt one of the best clarinet and tenor sax players in the swing tradition. Each of them had recorded a number of albums for Venus Records of Japan separately - Charlap with his great New York Trio (with Jay Leonhart and Bill Stewart) and Peplowski with his own quartet and the Eddie Higgins Quintet. Now, wouldn't it be nice to put them together in a studio and make an album? Yes, it would, and they actually did it…