Curtis Stigers - Hooray For Love

Size: 91,8 MB
Time: 39:11
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2014
Styles: Vocal Jazz Pop
Art: Front

01. Love Is Here To Stay (4:19)
02. Valentine’s Day (3:41)
03. You Make Me Feel So Young (With Cyrille Aimee) (4:32)
04. Hooray For Love (2:45)
05. The Way You Look Tonight (4:51)
06. Give Your Heart To Me (3:51)
07. That’s All (3:44)
08. A Matter Of Time (2:53)
09. If I Were A Bell (3:13)
10. You Don’t Know What Love Is (5:20)

A one-time adult contemporary star -- his 1991 eponymous debut was produced by Glen Ballard and, not long afterward, he made Nick Lowe a millionaire thanks to his cover of "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace Love and Understanding" on The Bodyguard soundtrack -- Curtis Stigers long ago established himself as a skilled jazz singer and his 2014 set, Hooray for Love, is perhaps his most traditional record yet. Light on originals -- the title track and "Give Your Heart to Me" are the only tunes that bear his credits -- and also skimpy on the kinds of unexpected covers that distinguished his new millennial records (only Steve Earle's "Valentine's Day" fits that bill), Hooray for Love is anchored on the songs that everybody knows and loves: "You Make Me Feel So Young," performed here as a duet with Cyrille Aimee, "The Way You Look Tonight," "A Matter of Time," and "If I Were a Bell." As recognizable as these songs are, Stigers doesn't seem stifled by their reputation. The intimate setting -- featuring no more than pianist Matthew Fries, guitarist Matt Munisteri, bassist Cliff Schmitt, drummer Keith Hall, and trumpeter John "Scrapper" Sneider, who also produces -- allows Stigers to be limber and he's also happy to fade into the background and let his band just play. This looseness is what keeps Hooray for Love so engaging: Stigers isn't simply enjoying singing, he's enjoying playing with his band. ~Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Hooray For Love

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Mary Stallings - Don't Look Back

Styles: Vocal Jazz
Year: 2012
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 60:15
Size: 138,2 MB
Art: Front

(4:04)  1. When Lights Are Low
(6:11)  2. The Way You Love Me
(4:27)  3. Night Mist Blues
(6:09)  4. Goodbye Medley
(3:55)  5. Is That...? (This Love)
(6:11)  6. Don't Look Back
(5:07)  7. Love Me or Leave Me
(3:21)  8. Don't Misunderstand
(4:38)  9. Key Largo
(5:31) 10. Soul Eyes
(4:39) 11. Mary's Blues
(5:56) 12. People Time (Forever Mine)

Just over 50 years have passed since 22-year-old Mary Stallings established herself as the finest new voice in jazz with the release of Cal Tjader Plays, Mary Stallings Sings. Since then, Stallings has released fewer albums than the average person has fingers, the earliest dating to 1990. Tempting as it is to ruminate over what could have been, it’s better to celebrate the fact that she has been steadily active throughout the past two decades and remains, at 72, the consummate jazz singer. It’s also tempting to say that her tone and phrasing are strongly reminiscent of Carmen McRae and that her warmth rivals Nancy Wilson. Both statements are true, but comparisons can imply inferiority, and Stallings is second to none. 

In 2001, Stallings found an ideal musical partner in pianist/arranger Eric Reed when they teamed for her Live at the Village Vanguard. They again united two years ago for the sensational Dream. Now, for their third pairing together with bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Carl Allen Stallings and Reed easily surpass their earlier triumphs, achieving the same sort of rare, supreme simpatico as Ella and Louis or Sinatra and Riddle. The playlist is equally marvelous, dipping into the Benny Carter, Ahmad Jamal, Mal Waldron and K. Lawrence Dunham songbooks, and including two exceptional Reed compositions, the lilting “Is That…? (This Love)” and, crafted especially for Stallings, the sassy “Mary’s Blues.” ~ Christopher Loudon   http://jazztimes.com/articles/30111-don-t-look-back-mary-stallings.

Personnel: Mary Stallings: vocals; Eric Reed: piano and arrangements; Reuben Rogers: bass (except 3,9,10,11); Carl Allen: drums (except 3,9,10,11).

Don't Look Back

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Eliane Elias - Sings Jobim

Styles: Brazilian Jazz
Year: 1998
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 51:16
Size: 117,4 MB
Art: Front

(3:53)  1. Girl from Ipanema
(3:03)  2. One Note Samba
(2:07)  3. Jazz 'n' Samba
(3:00)  4. She's a Carioca
(2:46)  5. Looks Like December
(3:24)  6. Desafinado
(3:06)  7. Falando de Amor
(3:00)  8. Song of the Jet
(4:02)  9. A Felicidade
(2:51) 10. For All of My Life
(2:56) 11. How Insensitive
(4:16) 12. Forgetting You
(1:35) 13. Pois é
(4:43) 14. Once I Loved
(2:25) 15. Modinha
(4:02) 16. Caminhos Cruzados

Elias started with the piano at age seven. She studied at the Free Center of Music Apprenticeship in São Paulo. She joined Brazilian singer/guitarist/songwriter Toquinho and poet/entertainer Vinicius de Moraes when she was 17 years old, with whom she made concert tours for three years, mainly through South America. On a tour in Europe in 1981, she met jazz bassist Eddie Gomez and was encouraged to travel to New York. After moving there, she was invited to join Steps Ahead, and recorded one album with the group in 1983. After leaving Steps Ahead, she worked with trumpet player Randy Brecker, whom she subsequently married. They recorded an album named Amanda, after their daughter. In 1988 she was elected as "Best New Talent" by the JAZZIZ magazine poll of jazz critics. She divorced Randy in the early 1990s. She has recorded several notable albums, including one featuring duets with Herbie Hancock. 

Their 1995 disc Solos and Duets was nominated for a Grammy in the "Jazz instrumental video" category. In 1997, American musician Bob Brookmeyer dedicated a full album to his arrangements of Eliane's compositions, backed by the Danish Jazz Orchestra and published under the name of Impulsive!, which received another Grammy nomination as "Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album" in 2001. Elias was one of the featured artists in the Latin jazz documentary, Calle 54, released in 2000. In 2002 she made her first appearance on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz radio program (and another in 2008). She is married to bassist Marc Johnson, with whom she has produced several albums including the ECM Records release titled Shades of Jade which features Eliane's writing and piano-playing. This recording won the Best Foreign Release Award in Denmark in 2006 and was chosen by Time Magazine as one of the five best Fall releases in 2005. ~ Bio  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliane_Elias

Personnel:  Personnel: Eliane Elias (vocals, piano); Michael Brecker (tenor saxophone); Oscar Castro-Neves (acoustic guitar, background vocals); Marc Johnson (acoustic bass, background vocals); Paulo Braga (drums, bongos, background vocals); Cafe (percussion); Amanda Brecker, Christine Martin, Elza Silva (background vocals).

Sings Jobim

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Bob Brookmeyer & Bill Evans - The Ivory Hunters

Styles: Piano Jazz
Year: 1959
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 42:25
Size: 97,4 MB
Art: Front

(5:55)  1. Honeysuckle Rose
(6:56)  2. As Time Goes By
(7:39)  3. The Way You Look Tonight
(7:26)  4. It Could Happen To You
(5:57)  5. The Man I Love
(8:30)  6. I Got Rhythm

Yes, that's Bob Brookmeyer the valve trombonist, and it's Bill Evans the pianist who, during the same year as this recording, would appear with Miles Davis on the fabled Kind of Blue session (Columbia, 1959). Some listeners will no doubt be familiar with the session, originally issued by United Artists under Brookmeyer's name and with the descriptive sub-title "Double-Barrelled Piano." But if you're hearing about this curious match-up for the first time, and close to the beginning of April at that, be assured that neither Brookmeyer's listing as a "pianist" nor his playing of the instrument is a joke. The story is that after Evans agreed to the unusual pairing, Brookmeyer was "tricked" by a clever record producer into making this session. Showing up at the studio and seeing Percy Heath and Connie Kay  one-half of the Modern Jazz Quartet Brookmeyer was ready to take out his trombone until the presence of two tuned grand pianos made it clear that the studio had other things in mind. 

Brookmeyer is good enough as a pianist to make the comparison with Evans rewarding and instructive. They take turns playing melodies and bridges, then trade whole choruses as well as phrases. In each case, Evans admittedly plays with greater precision, more focused tone, and hipper left-hand voicings, but Brookmeyer holds up his end thanks to his harmonic savvy and finger technique (often arrangers who play piano show their limitations when it comes to digital dexterity). The two pianists complement each other quite well, sounding relaxed in the hands of a bassist and drummer who by this time were playing less as two musicians than a single organism. "The Way You Look Tonight" is one of two highlights on the date, Evans taking a round-toned, nicely shaped solo in the middle register, alternating single-noted with block-chorded melodies while Brookmeyer finds pedal tones and obligato octave phrases that risk little in the way of harmonic discord. 

By now the attentive listener should have no trouble distinguishing the two players, as Evans' mid-register solo on "It Could Happen to You" impresses with intricate melodic invention and cleanly voiced harmonies while Brookmeyer begins to sound somewhat erratic with a mix of widely spaced, random-sounding voicings and occasionally rhythmically stiff phrasings. It's tempting to suggest that virtually anyone who can peck out a melody on the piano would come off sounding at worst "respectable" with support such as that provided by this trio. To Brookmeyer's credit, he neither panics nor plays it overly safe. "The Man I Love," the other stand-out on the date, begins as a ballad before yielding to a potentially unnerving up-tempo groove. The soloists briefly play melodic tag games, though on this tune as well as the concluding "I Got Rhythm," Brookmeyer begins to sound increasingly Monkish, even down to greater reliance on the sustain pedal. And when the more heralded pianist demonstrates his inimitable touch with some flawlessly executed, double-timed whirlwind note-streaming, each note distinct from the other yet receiving equal pressure, you know the game is up. In sum, enjoyable, tasteful music-making but hardly an essential recording unless you're a Bill Evans completist or Bob Brookmeyer. ~ Samuel Chell   http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=25128#.U1U511dSvro
 

Personnel: Bill Evans: piano; Bob Brookmeyer: piano; Percy Heath: bass; Connie Kay: drums.

The Ivory Hunters

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John Coltrane - My Favorite Things : Coltrane at Newport

Styles: Saxophone Jazz

Year: 2007

File: MP3@320K/s

Time: 79:37

Size: 183,0 MB

Art: Front

( 9:41)  1. I Want to Talk About You

(17:20)  2. My Favorite Things

(23:30)  3. Impressions

( 1:08)  4. Introduction by Father Norman O'Connor

(12:43)  5. One Down, One Up

(15:13)  6. My Favorite Things

Complete recordings of saxophonist John Coltrane's 1963 and 1965 Newport Festival appearances, most of the material on My Favorite Things: Coltrane Live At Newport has been available before. Most, but crucially, not all the disc includes some eight minutes of previously unreleased music. When you're talking about the incandescent Coltrane quartet of the mid 1960s, that's a serious chunk of time, more like eight light years to hardcore enthusiasts. The new material forms what is now the first third of "Impressions." It starts with a theme statement from Coltrane, on soprano, a six minute solo from pianist McCoy Tyner, and a brief extract from a solo by bassist Jimmy Garrison. Coltrane sets up the tune before Tyner takes it away for a forceful, dervish-like work-out, his two-fisted block chords framing percussive, rapid-fire single note runs concentrated at the treble end of the keyboard. It's a formidable improvisation by the pianist, and why it was left off previous releases is a mystery. Garrison's abbreviated solo follows. 

The rumbling distortion on his bottom string is so bad that the entire solo was excised from previous releases, and the excerpt included here is presumably the only passage which could be rendered listenable even with the latest digital technology. The track then takes up where the edited version on Newport '63 starts, with Coltrane, now on tenor, engaging in a fierce extended dialogue with drummer Roy Haynes (who was subbing for the quartet's regular drummer, Elvin Jones, laid up during the 1963 festival with a bad case of heroin addiction). The mixes are new too. While avoiding radical recalibrations of the balance between the instruments, they're substantially crisper and more resonant than on previous packagings: Newport '63 (Impulse!/GRP, 1993) and New Thing At Newport (Impulse!, 2000). In particular, the audio quality of first three tracks, from 1963, is mightily improved.Putting these two Newport appearances together on one disc serves, by the by, as a graphic illustration of Coltrane's journey towards the sonic extremes of his final few years from da bomb that was Ascension (Impulse!, 1965), recorded only a week earlier than the second Newport set, until the his death in 1967.

Even allowing for the presence of two massively different drummers the turbulent Jones and the more measured Haynes the shift in Coltrane's aesthetic is profound. The two versions of the soprano showcase "My Favorite Things" bookmark the process, from the more or less conventional lyricism of the first, to the freer, more abrasive tonalities entering the second. We know the story already, of course, but hearing these two tracks practically back-to-back certainly emphasizes it. Factor in the new mixes, and My Favorite Things: Coltrane Live At Newport is far from being "just" another Coltrane re-master. ~ CHRIS MAY    

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=26621#.U11IXlfZf5c

Personnel: John Coltrane: soprano and tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner: piano; Jimmy Garrison: bass; Roy Haynes: drums (1-3); Elvin Jones: drums (5,6).

My Favorite Things : Coltrane at Newport

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