Solacium

In 1957, the greatest year for recorded music including modern jazz, Detroit was a hot spot, a centerpiece to many hometown heroes as well as short-term residents like John Coltrane and Miles Davis. It was here that Trane connected with pianist Tommy Flanagan, subsequently headed for the East Coast, and recorded this seminal hard bop album. In tow were fellow Detroiters - drummer Louis Hayes, bassist Doug Watkins, and guitarist Kenny Burrell, with the fine trumpeter from modern big bands Idrees Sulieman as the sixth wheel...

Although he gets equal billing with the Belgian flutist Bobby Jaspar, Herbie Mann only appears on two tracks of this re-release of a pair of 1957 sessions. The session that included Mann also features Jaspar, pianist Tommy Flanagan, guitarist Joe Puma, bassist Endell Marshall and drummer Bobby Donaldson.
Though Mann's only aboard for two cuts, they make up half of the playing time, and it's a treat to hear him solo on alto flute on his own "Tutti Flutie" and to trade solos with Jaspar on Puma's "Bo-Do." It's a welcome reminder that long before he achieved crossover success and soul jazz stardom, Herbie Mann was an accomplished straight ahead player and composer, with exceptional touch and tone.

Reviewed by Shaun Dale

The exquisitely decorated 15th century choir book known as the Old Hall manuscript was lost to history for the best part of 400 years until its reappearance in a Catholic seminary at the end of the 19th century. The largest surviving collection of medieval motets and mass movements, it immediately became the most celebrated source of English music of the period. It was written in the first instance by a single scribe to ensure that the music of his fellow singers was not forgotten. Many of them are known only from this manuscript, and on this album they find their voices again after more than half a millennium of silence, transformed by the singing of Trio Mediæval in the company of Catalina Vicens, alongside new music by David Lang and Marianne Reidarsdatter Eriksen.