Oliver Burkemann 4000 Wochen

Playing sideman to Rick Braun, Larry Carlton, Gato Barbieri, the Neville Brothers, and many others introduced guitarist/vocalist Steve Oliver to smooth jazz fans, but it was with Steve Reid's band that Oliver found a following. It was 1996 when Reid contacted Oliver at the last minute to fill in for a canceled opening act. Oliver hit the stage as a solo act and Reid was impressed with the guitarist's vocalese skills and summery sound. Oliver had come to vocalese not through King Pleasure or Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, but through Bobby McFerrin and Pat Metheny's work with Richard Bona and David Blamires, who sang along with guitar solos. Being a fan of the earthy Metheny sound, Reid hired Oliver after the gig and featured him in his touring band. Reid's Mysteries and Passion in Paradise albums featured Oliver not only as guitarist but songwriter as well. Oliver struck out on his own in 1999 with his debut, First View, released by Night Vision. The album spawned three hit singles on smooth jazz radio and earned the guitarist a Debut Artist of the Year award from Smooth Jazz News.

What you've got here are King Oliver's final recordings as a leader. Big bands were still figuring themselves out in 1930, moving from one decade's definitive flavor into another stylistic space as yet unspecified. Hovering over everything was the gruesome specter of fiscal disaster. This did strange things to the music business. Pop culture became partly mummified by a creeping sentimentality that would emerge again during the age of Cold War conformity. During the 1930s and the 1950s jazz endured and continued to evolve, as it always will under any circumstances. With his best decade behind him, King Oliver presided over an orchestra that occasionally sounds a bit sleepy…

After the signal event that was World War I, gifted young composers trooped into the French metropolis full of hope. In 1925, the publisher Michel Dillard coined the term L’École de Paris (‘The Paris School’) in reference to the foreign composers then living in Paris, principally the Hungarian Tibor Harsányi (1898–1954), Poland’s Alexandre Tansman (1897–1986), Bohuslav Martinů from Czechoslovakia (1890–1959), Russia’s Alexander Tcherepnin (1899–1977), and the Romanian Marcel Mihalovici (1898–1985), all of whose works he specialised in disseminating. These composers came to Paris from Eastern Europe and all, with the exception of Martinů [and Swiss composer Conrad Beck (1901–1989)], died there. All five initially addressed the difficult task of translating their countries’ folk music idioms into standard musical notation. Several works on this programme are heard in their world premiere recordings.

The friendship between Mátyás Seiber and Antal Doráti dates back to their youth, when they were the two youngest students in Zoltán Kodály's composition class in Budapest in the 1920s. Doráti was one year younger than Seiber and held him in high esteem from the beginning. In the memoirs, Így láttuk Kodályt [‘Thus We Saw Kodály’], he writes the following: "The two 'best' were Mátyás Seiber and Lajos Bárdos. Matyi [Mátyás] wrote a great string quartet at the time, which has survived. One of our tasks was to write variations on a Handel theme. In response to one of Seiber's slow-tempo variations, Mr Kodály said: 'That's nice'. In our eyes - at least in my eyes - that was the canonization of Matyi".

One of the most famous sets of recordings in jazz history presented here complete and in stunning quality transfers by John R.T. Davies himself. Sleeve notes by Oliver-authority Laurie Wright. The complete set of the recordings by Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dodds and Oliver himself. For bonus points, the two very rare King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton duets and the pair of sides by Butterbeans and Susie with King Oliver accompaniments. The only word for this CD is "Definitive". The first great black jazz band on record.

Oliver Shanti, also known as Oliver Serano-Alve, is a New Age musician, best known for his work with the bands "Oliver Shanti & Friends" and "Inkarnation". "Oliver Shanti & Friends" is a collaborative New Age project led by Oliver Shanti together with his wife Margot Vogl and ever changing lineup of guest musicians from all over the world. Also a part of first regular lineup keyboard player Veit Wayman left in 1998. The project existed till 2003 and was effectively dissolved following the escape of Oliver Shanti during his prosecution.

After the devastation of World War I, young, hopeful, gifted composers trooped into the French capital. In 1925, the publisher Michel Dillard coined the term École de Paris (‘Paris School’) for the foreign composers then living there, especially Hungary’s Tibor Harsányi (1898–1954), Poland’s Alexandre Tansman (1897–1986), Czechoslovakia’s Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959), Russia’s Alexander Tcherepnin (1899–1977), and Romania’s Marcel Mihalovici (1898–1985), whose works he specialised in disseminating. All five composers featured in this album came to Paris from Eastern Europe and all, with the exception of Martinů, died there. They initially attempted to translate the essence of folk music from their homelands, using standard musical notation to express idiomatic subtleties that were difficult to capture. The programme includes the world premiere recordings of Harsányi’s Rhapsodie and Sonate Pour Violoncelle et Piano, and Mihalovici’s Sonate dans le caractère d’une scène lyrique.