The New York Allstars - We Love You, Louis

Bitrate: 320K/s
Time: 77:15
Size: 176.8 MB
Styles: Big band
Year: 1995/2011
Art: Front

[0:36] 1. When It's Sleepy Down South
[2:22] 2. Mabel's Dream
[3:03] 3. Sugar Foot Stomp
[4:49] 4. Big Butter And Egg Man
[3:11] 5. Cornet Chop Suey
[4:54] 6. Wild Man Blues
[3:18] 7. Potato Head Blues
[3:35] 8. Muskrat Ramble
[4:52] 9. Savoy Blues
[8:07] 10. Struttin' With Some Barbecue
[4:32] 11. Basin Street Blues
[2:53] 12. Weather Bird
[7:33] 13. Ballad Medley
[3:48] 14. Swing That Music
[6:08] 15. If I Could Be With You (One Hour Tonight)
[6:09] 16. Mack The Knife/The Faithful Hussar
[4:31] 17. Ole Miss Mabel's Dream
[2:46] 18. When It's Sleepy Down South

This excellent tribute to the music of Louis Armstrong has arrangements for an octet by Randy Sandke and consistently strong trumpet solos from Sandke and Byron Stripling. With strong assistance from clarinetist Kenny Davern, trombonist Joel Helleny and a four-piece rhythm section headed by pianist Mark Shane, Sandke and Stripling mostly (but not exclusively) explore Satch's music of the 1920s. A special highlight is "Struttin' with Some Barbecue" which not only reproduces the great trumpeter's famous 1927 solo, but also finds Stripling playing Satch's usual solo from the 1950s. Other highlights include "Sugar Foot Stomp," "Cornet Chop Suey," "Potato Head Blues," "Weatherbird" and "Swing That Music." Easily recommended to Louis Armstrong fans. ~ Scott Yanow

Recorded live at The Congress Centre, Hamburg, Germany on November 18, 1995.

Byron Stripling (vocals, trumpet); Randy Sandke (trumpet); Joel Helleny (trombone); David Ostwald (tuba); Kenny Davern (clarinet); Mark Shane (piano); Greg Cohen (bass); Joe Ascione (drums).

We Love You, Louis

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Tessa Souter - Beyond The Blue

Bitrate: 320K/s
Time: 59:42
Size: 136.7 MB
Styles: Vocal jazz
Year: 2011
Art: Front

[3:24] 1. Prelude To The Sun
[5:42] 2. The Lamp Is Low
[5:00] 3. Dance With Me
[5:27] 4. Chiaroscuro
[4:32] 5. My Reverie
[5:37] 6. Concierto De Aranjuez
[4:39] 7. Sunrise
[4:19] 8. Baubles, Bangles And Beads
[5:50] 9. Beyond The Blue
[5:04] 10. The Darkness Of Your Eyes
[4:38] 11. Noa's Dream
[5:26] 12. Brand New Day

Vocalist Tessa Souter is deservedly becoming treasured among jazz fans and musicians alike. She combines the sonority, vocal range and discipline of a classical lieder soprano with subtle and sultry jazz inflections. Everything she sings is meaningful, well thought out and in good taste. She works with the best instrumentalists and has a consummate grasp of both swing and the modern jazz idiom. All these elements are manifest in her newest album, Beyond the Blue, where Souter takes familiar themes from classical music, adds her own lyrics to most of them, and delivers what are essentially a new set of songs that are poetic in impact. The original melodies are all there to be heard, but the mood and interpretation are totally Souter, and all in the jazz idiom, expressing nuances of romance, love and intimacy. She is helped enormously by her instrumentalists, who play masterfully, supporting and elaborating on Souter's vocalizations with finesse and flair. ~Victor L. Schermer

Recording information: Avatar Studio, New York City (03/27/2011/03/28/2011).

Tessa Souter (vocals); Gary Versace (accordion); Joel Frahm (saxophone); Steve Kuhn (piano); Joe Locke (vibraphone); Billy Drummond (drums).

Beyond The Blue

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Paul Winter & Oscar Castro-Neves - Brazilian Days

Bitrate: 320K/s
Time: 43:34
Size: 99.7 MB
Styles: Brazilian jazz, Saxophone jazz
Year: 1998
Art: Front

[3:24] 1. Aula De Matematica (A Mathematics Lesson)
[4:05] 2. Coisa Mais Linda
[3:58] 3. Feitio De Oracao
[4:00] 4. Feio Nao Bonito
[3:54] 5. Minha Namorada
[3:34] 6. Tamben Quiem Mandou
[3:03] 7. Ana Luiza
[4:14] 8. Fetico Da Vila
[3:06] 9. Canto Triste
[4:45] 10. Imagem
[2:14] 11. Por Causa De Voc
[3:12] 12. Se E Tarde Me Perdoa (Forgive Me If I'm Late

In the early 1960s, long before he was a key figure in the environmental music genre, soprano saxophonist Paul Winter helped to bring Brazil's jazzy bossa nova sound to the U.S. Some forty years later, Winter takes a break from his work with the whales and wolves to revisit the rich songbook of classic bossa nova with the help of his old friend, guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves. The results harken back to that past era with a wistfulness as captivating as a cocktail hour breeze on a Rio de Janeiro balcony. Things kick off with a bouncy rendition of Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Aula de Matematica," and then mellow out with tunes penned by other Brazilian songwriting legends such as Noel Rosa, Oswald Gogliano, and Carlos Lyra. Backed by stand-up bass and Latin percussion, Winter's smooth-as-butter sax sails over and under the gently jangling melancholia of Castro-Neves' guitar with enough gentle grace to make this album work just as well for yoga or meditation as for dancing.

Recorded at Sunset Sound Factory, Hollywood, California; The Cathedral Of St. John The Divine, New York, New York; the Grand Canyon, Arizona.

Personnel: Paul Winter (soprano saxophone); Oscar Castro-Neves (guitar); Paul Halley (pipe organ); Nilson Matta (bass); Paulo Braga (drums); Cassio Duarte (percussion).

Brazilian Days

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Justin Hayward - Spirits Of The Western Sky

Bitrate: 320K/s
Time: 66:48
Size: 152.9 MB
Styles: Adult contemporary
Year: 2013
Art: Front

[4:09] 1. In Your Blue Eyes
[4:24] 2. One Day, Someday [alternative Extended Version]
[6:55] 3. The Western Sky
[4:13] 4. The Eastern Sun
[3:35] 5. On The Road To Love
[3:55] 6. Lazy Afternoon
[3:39] 7. In The Beginning
[4:01] 8. It's Cold Outside Of Your Heart
[4:32] 9. What You Resist Persists
[5:55] 10. Broken Dream
[3:52] 11. Captivated By You
[6:16] 12. One Day, Someday [alternative Extended Version] 2
[0:22] 13. Rising
[2:46] 14. Out There Somewhere
[8:07] 15. Out There Somewhere [raul Rincon Remix]

Spirits of the Western Sky, Moody Blues frontman Justin Hayward's first solo outing since 1996's View from the Hill, offers up a well-stocked selection of songs that pay homage to all eras of his meal-ticket band while introducing elements of rural folk and country into the mix. Lyrically simple, yet warm and soulful, songs like the gently fingerpicked "Eastern Sun" and the expansive title track should please "Watching and Waiting"-era Moody fans, while twang-tinged, dobro-propelled ballads like "It's Cold Outside of Your Heart" and "What You Resist Persists" retain the autumnal sentimentality that always resides in the heart of a Hayward composition, despite their folksy, Nashville trappings. ~ James Christopher Monger

Justin Hayward (guitar, keyboards, programming); Frederic Arturi (keyboards); Lele Melotti (drums); Alberto Parodi (programming); Tracey Ackerman (background vocals).

Spirits Of The Western Sky

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Nico Gori & Fred Hersch - Da Vinci

Styles: Jazz
Year: 2012
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 65:05
Size: 149,2 MB
Art: Front

(7:12)  1. Old Devil Moon
(5:29)  2. Da Vinci
(6:10)  3. Mandevilla
(6:25)  4. Down Home
(7:37)  5. 2-5
(6:30)  6. Lee's Dream
(4:24)  7. Hot House Flower
(8:11)  8. Doce De Coco
(6:00)  9. At The Close Of The Day
(7:03) 10. Tea For Two

Clarinetist Nico Gori and pianist Fred Hersch both played the North Sea Jazz Festival in July 2010 and struck up a friendship riding together on the bus from the performance site to the hotel. Soon thereafter they began a series of duo gigs in Europe and New York. The studio recording Da Vinci captures the strong element of fellowship between the Italian and the American.

Gori is most visible as member of pianist Stefano Bollani's group. Hersch, meanwhile, has established a strong reputation for his solo playing, notably including the Grammy-nominated Alone At The Vanguard (Palmetto, 2011).

For Hersch, the album provides an opportunity to add another instrument to what would have undoubtedly been strong solo performances. Hersch's compositions heard here have the weighty inevitability of old chestnuts it's hard to believe these are new songs. They sound like old European songs with classical resonances ("Da Vinci," "Mandevilla"), old blues ("Down Home"), or standards from the songbook ("At The Close Of The Day").

Gori's playing is clean and strong, European and often nearly classical sounding in its phrasing. Hersch's piano, meanwhile, seems to amalgamate every dense and self-sufficient strand of solo jazz piano playing from the last hundred years: stride, barrelhouse, Oscar Peterson, and Erroll Garner.

As such, the pairing of these two players is unlike the legendary 1950s pairing of white-hot John Coltrane and cool-blue Miles Davis (or indeed of Davis and Charlie Parker in the 1940s). Rather, Gori and Hersch exhibit, on this record, similar types of virtuosity: precise, florid and baroque with extraordinary control exercised over many moving parts. This is particularly true of Hersch's bravura solo on the opening, "Old Devil Moon," with its daring rhythmic forays, all kept ably aloft by the pianist, or of Gori's busily embroidered solo on "Doce De Coco." Da Vinci is, by and large, a meeting of hot with hot.

This "hot-hot" character extends through the set list. Most of the numbers here are mid-to- up-tempo performances, densely arranged and requiring a continuous virtuosity on the part of the players. Only on the wistful "At The Close Of The Day" (which would have been a marvelous vehicle for Bill Evans) and the Garner-esque "Hot House Flower" does the pace slow. Otherwise, the going is propulsive, and the mood is sunny. ~ Jeff Dayton-Johnson   

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=41928#.Umg_xRAufMo

Personnel: Nico Gori: clarinet; Fred Hersch: piano.

Da Vinci

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Lissy Walker - Life Is Sweet

Styles: Vocal Jazz
Year: 2010
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 51:49
Size: 119,8 MB
Art: Front

(6:00)  1. I Remember You
(5:06)  2. How Deep Is the Ocean
(4:31)  3. Waters of March
(3:59)  4. What'll I Do
(2:49)  5. Let Me Go
(3:06)  6. Moonbeam Song
(2:55)  7. More Than You Know
(4:45)  8. In the Wee Small Hours
(3:54)  9. Isn't It a Lovely Day
(4:17) 10. I Wish You Love
(4:23) 11. Celluloid Heroes
(5:59) 12. Saturday Sun

Life Is Sweet is the debut from Berkeley, California-based vocalist Lissy Walker. In an increasingly crowded pool of female jazz singers it's important to stand out from the norm: two things about Life Is Sweet ensure that Walker can do that. Firstly, there is Walker's song selection a tasteful and unusual mix of standards and more left-field but high quality tunes. Secondly, there's her voice a subtle but unmistakable hint of country music gives it a distinctive and emotive quality. At times, its fragility suggests a slight lack of confidence a pity, because Walker has much to feel confident about.

Walker's band helps things along, too. The core quartet is consistently good, while the guest musicians, especially cellist Philip Worman, add just the right touches with their performances. Any singer who records standards from the Great American Songbook needs to bring something new to their interpretations, and the album's opening tune, Johnny Mercer and Victor Schertzinger's "I Remember You," shows that Walker can do just that. The arrangement, by pianist John R Burr, features a delicate trumpet part from Steven Bernstein and propulsive but light drums from Scott Amendola. Walker's vocal hangs back a little, resisting Amendola's invitation to hurry along and, instead, creating a relaxed, almost laidback approach to the melody.

Elsewhere, a distinct country feel pervades many of the tunes, to great effect. When singing about love lost or found, the country music aesthetic of "three chords and the truth" is often ideal, and Walker and her band apply it with great skill. Burr's piano on "How Deep is the Ocean" is a direct descendant of Floyd Cramer, for example, while on Irving Berlin's "What'll I Do?," voice and cello combine in a delightful country waltz.

Walker's left-field choices also include Randy Newman's "Let Me Go" and Ray Davies' (The Kinks) "Celluloid Heroes." In "Days" and "Waterloo Sunset," Davies wrote two of the finest of all pop songs; unfortunately, "Celluloid Heroes" pales in comparison, and the clarity of Walker's vocal only serves to highlight its unconvincing lyrics. Harry Nilsson's "The Moonbeam Song" and Nick Drake's "Saturday Sun" are another story. Walker gets to the heart of both songs, delivering the album's most affecting performances. "The Moonbeam Song" features Jon Evans' lap steel guitar, while "Saturday Sun" sees the quartet joined by saxophonist Dave Ellis and Hammond organist Julie Wolf. Neither song is particularly well-known, but both are inspired choices; the arrangements ensuring that the poignancy of the lyrics is echoed and amplified by the musicians' sensitive performances.

With Life Is Sweet, and with the help of an empathetic and talented band, Lissy Walker imbues her jazz phrasing with a country edge, and establishes herself as a singer to watch and to listen for. ~ Bruce Lindsay  

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=36463#.UmhHQRAufMo

Personnel: Lissy Walker: vocals; John R Burr: piano; Scott Nygaard: guitar; Jon Evans: bass, lap steel (3, 6); Scott Amendola: drums; Steven Bernstein: trumpet (1, 9, 10); Philip Worman: cello (2, 4, 8, 11); Dave Ellis: sax (12); Julie Wolf: Hammond organ (12).

Life Is Sweet

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Nancy Kelly - Live Jazz

Styles: Vocal,  Jazz
Year: 1988
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 47:59
Size: 109,9 MB
Art: Front

(5:17)  1. Since I Fell for You
(5:20)  2. Twisted
(5:28)  3. Somewhere
(4:06)  4. But Not for Me
(5:15)  5. Yesterdays
(6:01)  6. Over the Rainbow
(5:57)  7. Lover Man
(4:43)  8. Almost Like Being in Love
(5:48)  9. I Wish You Love

Discover the spontaneity of digital jazz as Nancy breaths new life into classic Jazz Standard favorites with help, from some of today’s most prestigious and accomplished musicians. From swing to sultry ballads, Nancy demonstrates her incredible ability from start to finish.

Ernie Watt’s ripping sax embellishes each track with fiery and distinctive sounds. Ex Weather Report drummer Peter Erskin leads the rhythm section of Biff Hannon (Piano) and Tom Warrington (Bass) with unparalleled precision and excitement.  http://www.nancykelly.com/livejazz.shtml

Live Jazz

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Scott Hamilton - Nocturnes & Serenades

Styles: Saxophone Jazz
Year: 2006
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 55:29
Size: 127,1 MB
Art: Front

(5:17)  1. Man with a Horn
(4:41)  2. Autumn Nocturne
(7:36)  3. Flamingo
(4:37)  4. I'm Glad There Is You
(4:31)  5. Serenade in Blue
(6:15)  6. Isn't It a Pity
(6:40)  7. You Go to My Head
(4:32)  8. Chelsea Bridge
(6:19)  9. By the River Sainte Marie
(4:57) 10. A Portrait of Jenny

Scott Hamilton doesn't fix a thing here, but then when nothing's broke, there's no need to make such an effort, especially when what he does instead is prove that he has spent decades becoming himself. There are here no more than residual echoes of all the tenor sax players who've mined this fertile musical seam in the past, and the results are nothing short of uplifting.

In the press release that accompanies this disc, Hamilton refers to the fact that he didn't take the music school route in learning his craft, and the odd thing is that the older he gets, the more this becomes apparent. It's as if he's arrived at his own conclusions on the likes of "Autumn Nocturne" at the same time as he's cognisant with Lester Young's assertion regarding the importance of knowing a lyric if one is playing any particular song. The passing decades have also had the heartening effect of deepening his musicianship, and on something like "Isn't It A Pity," this manifests itself in a depth of lyricism and a quality of reflection that's welcome in our increasingly fractious world.

As a half-time resident of London, it's not surprising that he's gone and got himself a superlative British rhythm section here, and the fact that the whole programme is taken at slow to medium tempo has the effect of emphasizing the group's skill at subtlety and nuance. While Hamilton is nearly always front and centre, Bassist Dave Green's outing on "By The River Sainte Marie" sticks in the mind, as does John Pearce's piano work on "Serenade In Blue." Drummer Steve Brown pushes when that's needed, but his contributions throughout ensure that the music burns with the bluest flame. The idea that certain strands of jazz are timeless will perhaps always be a contentious one. This doesn't alter the fact that this is timeless music that's anything but emaciated when it's put across as it is here. Hamilton, Pearce, Green and Brown offer us a work of art, as opposed to the merely clinical strivings of the technically accomplished. ~ Nic Jones  

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=23113#.UmHQQhAuf-I

Personnel: Scott Hamilton: tenor saxophone; John Pearce: piano; Dave Green: bass; Steve Brown: drums.

Nocturnes & Serenades

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