Nigel Hamilton Monty

Tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton's debut for Concord alerted the jazz world to the young swing stylist and predated Wynton Marsalis' first record (and the emergence of the Young Lions) by a couple years. Hamilton, who mixed together Zoot Sims and Ben Webster to form his own recognizable tone, already sounded in prime form for this set. Teamed up with trumpeter Bill Berry, pianist Nat Pierce, bassist Monty Budwig, and drummer Jake Hanna, Hamilton essentially launched the revival of mainstream jazz with this record. Highlights include "Indiana," "Stuffy," "Broadway," and "Blue Room," but all eight selections are quite enjoyable.

Monty Adkins is experimental sound artist based in remote countryside of the north of England. His work is deeply influenced by the visual arts and psychogeography resulting in collaborations with a number of painters and digital artists. Inhabiting a post-acousmatic sensibility, Monty’s work draws together elements from ambient, acousmatic and microsound music producing a soundworld characterised by slow shifting organic textures derived from processed instrumental sounds. His work can be found on various labels including Audiobulb, Cronica, Signature, and empreintes DIGITALes. He presents on Eilean Rec. his sixth solo albums since 2009.

Musically, in terms of being a James Bond score, Dr. No is the weakest of the soundtrack albums in the film series, with only Monty Norman's "James Bond Theme" marking out familiar territory. But as a piece of music and a pop culture artifact, Dr. No may be the most interesting album in the whole output of the James Bond series. A good portion of the most memorable music in the film, including "Kingston Calypso" (the "Three Blind Mice" theme from the opening of the film) and "Jump Up," constituted mainstream American (and European) audiences' introduction to the sounds of Byron Lee & the Dragonaires (who also appeared in the movie, performing "Jump Up"), who became one of the top Jamaican music acts in the world just a couple of years later; sharp-eyed viewers can catch a young white man dancing in that same scene, incidentally, who is none other than Chris Blackwell, the future founder of Island Records.

Jazz purists may turn up the nose at this jazz-reggae summit meeting, but that's their loss. It's not that they wouldn't have the right to be suspicious - experiments in jazz-reggae fusion do not have a distinguished history. But the combination of Jamaican-born jazz pianist Monty Alexander and reggae godfathers Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare works beautifully here for a number of reasons: first of all, Alexander is a gifted melodist with an unerring sense of groove (not always a given with jazz players), and second of all, Sly and Robbie emancipated themselves long ago from reggae's rhythmic strictures, so there's lots of variety on this album…

Brown took a fresh approach for this 1982 date, retaining the trio format but substituting flute for drums and using Monty Alexander instead of regular pianist Gene Harris. The results were intriguing; Most provided colors and sounds that haven't been on a Brown date since, while Alexander added some Caribbean flavor and a bit more adventurous sound.

Love Notes, a brand-new album of eleven tracks with vocals and piano by Monty Alexander, is set for release on August 19th, 2022. The collection represents the culmination of Monty’s decades-long desire to record a vocal album after releasing 75 piano projects over the course of his illustrious, critically-acclaimed career.