Soul Jazz Records are releasing Count Ossie and The Mystic Revelation's seminal 1975 album Tales of Mozambique in an expanded double album/single CD/digital format, fully remastered and with the inclusion of two bonus rare single-only tracks, full sleevenotes, exclusive photographs and interview. Count Ossie is the central character in the development of Rastafarian roots music, nowadays an almost mythical and iconic figure. His importance in bringing Rastafarian music to a populist audience is matched only by Bob Marley's promotion of the faith internationally in the 1970s.
Strut present an exclusive collaboration between two jazz greats, Bennie Maupin and Adam Rudolph, on ‘Symphonic Tone Poem For Brother Yusef’, originally commissioned by the Angel City Jazz festival in Claremont, to mark the late, great Yusef Lateef’s 100th birthday on 9th October, 2020.
Group Theory: Black Music is a stunning new statement from South African drummer and composer Tumi Mogorosi. Standing in the lineage of South African greats such as Louis Moholo-Moholo, Makaya Ntshoko and Ayanda Sikade, Mogorosi is one of the foremost drummers working anywhere in the world, with a flexible, powerful style that brings a distinctive South African inflection to the polyrhythmic tradition of Elvin Jones, Max Roach and Art Blakey. Since his international debut on Jazzman Records in 2014 with Project ELO, Mogorosi has been in the vanguard of the South African creative music scene’s burgeoning outernational dimension, taking the drummer’s chair in both Shabaka Hutchings’ Shabaka and The Ancestors formation and with avant-garde noiseniks The Wretched.
David Virelles presents an eagerly awaited debut album with this superb trio on Intakt Records. Born in Santiago de Cuba, the pianist and composer has established himself on the international jazz scene with his Afro-Cuban influenced keyboard artistry and has made a name for himself with numerous collaborations with artists such as Henry Threadgill, Andrew Cyrille, Chris Potter, Wadada Leo Smith, Tom Harrell, Milford Graves and Ravi Coltrane, among others. Eight of the nine compositions on Carta are penned by Virelles and all open doors to free interpretation and development. Oscillating between composition and improvisation, this trio brings together three of the most influential voices in contemporary US jazz. Carta was recorded at the legendary Rudy van Gelder Studio, and in lieu of liner notes, poet Malik Crumpler has contributed a poem inspired by the music on the album and by his conversations with the musicians.