Spring Roo

"When I listen to these records now… when I listen to the Pershing, it's phenomenal, I must say. What they were doing, phenomenal, the lines and the purity. It's so pure … It was sheer joy working with these two individuals. Master musicians," writes pianist/bandleader Ahmad Jamal in the liner notes to this collection. If there ever was a subject worthy of a Mosaic box set, Jamal is it. For six decades, he has been, for several reasons, one of the most enduring and identifiable artists in jazz, or, as he prefers to describe it, "American classic music." First, there is his sound: a breathtaking amalgam of Erroll Garner's pithy touch, Nat "King" Cole's intricate horn-like, pre-bop lines, and Art Tatum's Mephistophelean technique.

Between 2008 and 2014 Universal Classics reissued nearly all of Martha Argerich’s Deutsche Grammophon recordings in a series of boxed sets, largely according to genre (solo, chamber, duo, concerto, and so forth). There also was a box containing her output for the Philips label and another devoted to her complete recordings with Claudio Abbado. All of this material appears anew in DG’s 48-CD collection Martha Argerich: The Complete Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon, with the addition of the 1977 Stravinsky Les Noces conducted by Leonard Bernstein, the Chopin and Schumann duos with cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, and more recent releases like the Berlin and Cologne Chopin Radio Recordings, the 2014 duo piano recital with Daniel Barenboim, and the 4-disc Lugano Concertos collection. The discs are packaged in original-jacket facsimiles and sequenced in more-or-less chronological order by release date.

Recognized worldwide as "The First Lady of Song," Ella Fitzgerald is arguably the finest female jazz vocalist of all time. Blessed with a highly resonant voice, wide range, and near-perfect elocution, Fitzgerald also possessed a deft sense of swing, and with her brilliant scat technique, could hold her own against any of her instrumental contemporaries. She came to initial popularity as a member of drummer Chick Webb's band in the 1930s, scoring a hit with a "A-Tisket, A-Tasket," before ascending to wide acclaim in the 1940s with Jazz at the Philharmonic and Dizzy Gillespie's Big Band, and issuing landmark performances like "Flying Home" and "How High the Moon." Working with producer/manager Norman Granz, she gained even more acclaim with her series of albums on Verve, recording definitive versions of the music of the Great American Songbook composers, including 1956's Sings the Cole Porter Songbook. Over her 50-year career, she earned 13 Grammy Awards, sold over 40 million albums, and picked up numerous accolades including a National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. A hugely important cultural figure, Fitzgerald made an immeasurable impact on the development of jazz and popular music, and remains a touchstone for fans and artists decades after her passing.

This 6CD collection includes every studio title recorded by the group from their very first efforts in early 1959, right up to the very end of 1966. It features 31 tracks in mono not previously available on CD & 3 tracks which are released in stereo for the very first time.

It's hard to judge Jeff Buckley's live collection Mystery White Boy: Live '95-'96 without thinking of what might have been, without realizing that he never fulfilled the extent of his potential. If that sounds harsh, it's not meant to be – it's more of an acknowledgment of the tragedy of his premature death. After all, Mystery White Boy simply wouldn't exist if Buckley was alive when it was released in the spring of 2000.