Stern 13. September 2019

GRAMMY Award-winning keyboardist/composer/producer Jeff Lorber recalls seeing guitarist Mike Stern during his much-ballyhooed tenure with Miles Davis in the early ‘80s. “I’ve been a fan of his for a long time,” said the keyboardist, who was touring hard in support of his hit records Wizard Island and It’s a Fact in those analog days. “Jeff Lorber Fusion and Miles Davis were playing some of the same festivals back then, so I got to hear him play.” For his part, Stern offered, “To be honest, I was aware of him, and had heard a bunch of good things, but I had never really checked him out. We were just in different orbits, me and Jeff.”

In her first large ensemble recording, pianist/composer Peggy Stern reflects a deeply harmonic, richly hued piano style into original written music, employing a sensitive and very talented horn section. Trumpeter Ron Horton, tenor saxophonist John McKenna, and trombonist Art Baron bring Stern's charts to life, and bassists Harvie Swartz and Art Kell, drummers Tony Moreno and Bernard Purdie, and percussionist Memo Acevedo lay out the rhythmic landscape that is the foundation for the inventive vistas the pianist conjures.
The CD is bookended by Afro-Cuban based pieces. The first, "Salsicle," is truly an outstanding piece of modern jazz, using heated up-beats and a stance completely contemporary, with attractive, modally saturated piano chords…

It isn’t just Joe and Jane Average curled up on the couch binge-watching Game of Thrones in comfy sweats; it’s also your favorite artists, cradling a bowl of snacks, streaming away on the tour bus. As this compilation of Thrones-inspired songs makes clear, their fascination with the fabled HBO drama runs deep. On “Too Many Gods,” A$AP Rocky and Joey Bada$$ mull over false prophets while dropping in a GoT reference (“Playing with fire but I’m no Targaryen”). Singer-songwriters like Jacob Banks, Lennon Stella, Chloe x Halle, and ROSALÍA imbue their tributes with stern keys and an existential dread that's so familiar to the show's fans. And it’s especially fun to hear a pop singer like Ellie Goulding tap into a sinister ruthlessness on “Hollow Crown”: “Making a noose out of your hollow crown/I hold a match up to your paper castle/And watch it all burn down, down, down.

It is usually the big nineteenth-century opera sets that are bought for their singers; but with a line-up of principals such as we have here Handel too is swept into the golden net. Lucia Popp, two years into her career after her Vienna debut, Christa Ludwig, Fritz Wunderlich, Walter Berry: that is a quartet which in its time may have seemed no more than standard stuff, but at this date looks starry indeed. […] The Orfeo, for one thing, is sung in German instead of Italian; it has cuts, though many fewer than the Mackerras recording in English with Dame Janet Baker; it has the solo voices recorded very close indeed (those that are supposedly off-stage are just about where many modern recordings would have them except when off-stage); and the orchestra sounds, to our re-trained ears, big and thick, with the heavy bass-line that used to seem as proper to Handel as gravy from the roast was to Yorkshire pudding.

This double album offers a portrait of the violinist Amandine Beyer drawn from the recordings she has made for ZZT. The first CD selects highlights from her chamber repertoire, including works by Jean-Féry Rebel, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Nicola Matteis, and Robert de Visée. The second is devoted to the concerto, with compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, and Arcangelo Corelli. This programme is an ideal introduction to the multiple facets of Amandine Beyer’s talent and to the grace and joie de vivre of her music-making. It also provides an opportunity to discover one of Corelli’s Concerti Grossi op.6, a preview of the complete set to be released on ZZT in the autumn of 2013.

Jimmy McIntosh And…’ is a thoughtful and well played album that combines blues, fusion, funk, rock and even moments of free form playing, on a dozen tracks with variety, a coherently flow and Jimmy’s unique musical imprint. In short, ‘Jimmy McIntosh And…’ is an album that celebrates the joy of collaborative playing and crossover genres by a guitarist who balances feel with taste and original arrangements well suited to his guests.