Smith Burrows

This session, under the leadership of trumpeter Louis Smith, brings hard bop veterans together with a couple newcomers who were at the time helping to revive the style. This is the kind of recording session where one gets a taste of the fireworks that would result from a live jam session featuring the participants. Each soloist launches into the heart of the tune, cutting out the preliminaries and never reaching the heights more extended blowing would allow. Each song gives the frontline and pianist Kevin Hays a chance to have their say. The hornmen have complementary yet distinctive approaches. Tenor saxophonist Junior Cook, like Smith a former member of Horace Silver's combo, is a study in soulful reserve, whittling statements from the grain of the tunes.

I do not want to start too many hares running, but I suggest that if a newcomer to opera listened to La Traviata and then Il Trovatore, one after another, he or she would quickly identify the composer as one, no matter the different moods and key register. If the same listener did the same with Die Zauberflöte and La Clemenza di Tito I doubt that the listener would identify the works as being by the same composer.

There are big changes brewing in Gotham City, and if he wants to save the city from The Joker's hostile takeover, Batman may have to drop the lone vigilante thing, try to work with others and maybe, just maybe, learn to lighten up.

The Greatest Singer-Songwriter Hits is the beginning of a new concept around the greatest hits and names in the singer-songwriter genre. This 2CD contains the greatest hits of the current generation of singer-songwrtiters, including: Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, Hozier, Paolo Nutini, Ben Howard, James Bay, Dotan and Damien Rice and more…