Fraser Macpherson Trio - Live at the Planetarium

Styles: Saxophone Jazz
Year: 2015
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 50:54
Size: 117,1 MB
Art: Front

(4:54)  1. I'm Getting Sentimental Over You
(5:54)  2. Li'l Darlin'
(3:57)  3. Lush Life
(6:21)  4. My Funny Valentine
(4:40)  5. Tangerine
(9:25)  6. Django
(5:14)  7. I Cried for You
(6:23)  8. Secret Love
(4:02)  9. (Back Home Again In) Indiana

Fraser MacPherson was a first-call studio musician for decades before he released his first jazz album in the mid-70s. Despite it being self-produced, Fraser: Live at the Planetarium (featuring Oliver Gannon on guitar and Wyatt Ruther on bass) received raves from near and far. Cadence, out of New York, named it one of the top ten albums of 1976, describing the music as “the most glorious, inspiring sounds.” Britain’s Jazz Journal wrote, “If the jazz on Canada’s West Coast is all of this caliber, lead me to it!” and called MacPherson “a prodigiously gifted and swinging saxophonist.” Stereo Review listed it as “Jazz Record of the Month,” adding, “I really don’t know if they play together regularly. Judging by the rapport in evidence on the record, however, I’m quite willing right now to lay a little money on it.” Someone should have taken the critic up on the bet because the truth of the matter is that the concert at the Planetarium was just the trio’s fifth after forming earlier that year. From that point on, though, the group was in demand all around the world. MacPherson and Gannon, both separately and together, would go on to make numerous CDs. The Planetarium album, however, was never one of them. It was released only on vinyl and cassette. Forty years after the original concert, the album has finally been made available digitally. Prior to this, you had to scour fine second-hand record shops then dust off your turntable in order to hear it. 

Now, not only can you listen to it on any device you want, there’s the added bonus of two tracks that didn’t make it onto vinyl. Secret Love and Indiana are outstanding additions that could easily have made the cut were it not for time. The album is a classic without them, but they’re further evidence that the first seven tracks were no fluke! Fraser: Live at the Planetarium remains a favourite of many, including some damn fine younger musicians who wore out their copies of it. Take the great saxophonist and pianist Phil Dwyer, for example, a Juno Award-winner himself and fellow Member of the Order of Canada (MacPherson and Gannon picked up a Juno in 1983 for their duo album I Didn’t Know About You, and MacPherson became a Member of the Order of Canada in 1987). Phil writes: "My dad was a huge fan of “Fras” going back to the Cave days. When the Planetarium album was released, I’m sure he bought one of the first copies. I would have been 11 years old then and the music on the album meshed perfectly with my tastes at the time (Pres, Ben Webster, Johnny Hodges). Over the years that album was one of the most frequently played in our house often it was one of the only things that my dad and I could agree on! After giving it another listen prior to writing down these thoughts, I have to say that it sounds better to me than ever. Fraser, Oliver and Wyatt achieved the perfect balance of swing, melody and wit that is the hallmark of the best that jazz has to offer." And Richard Underhill, another Juno Award-winning saxophonist (and founding member of Shuffle Demons), was another big fan. He writes: "Live at the Planetarium was a gift to me on my 14th birthday. My mother had chosen that and another classic jazz album, Time Out, as inspiration for an aspiring young sax player in Salmon Arm, BC. She chose well. “Take Five” echoed through the house on many an after-school eve, but “I Cried For You” and “Tangerine” got top billing.

I played Live at the Planetarium hundreds of times and marveled at the elegant beauty of every note on the album. Fraser MacPherson’s warm and inviting tone, his effortless driving swing and lyrical lines soared over Oliver Gannon’s intricate yet hard-swinging guitar accompaniment. Live at the Planetarium enticed me into the world of jazz with grace and groove and to this day remains one of my favourite albums. I’m excited by the re-release and can’t wait to hear the bonus tracks!" On a personal note, I have to say this is also my favourite of my father’s recordings. It didn’t start out that way, though. As an elementary school student, I’d been pestering him to get his own band. I remembered his days leading the band at the Cave Supper Club and was taken with the trumpets, trombones, drums, the occasional flute, and piano. When that job died down after about a decade, he found himself recording jingles, TV, and being a sideman. I wanted to see my dad as the leader again. When he told me he finally got his own group, I admit I was disappointed to see just a guitar and bass accompany him. What kind of band was that?! But I tagged along during the pressing of that album and heard the music over and over again for a few weeks. And I haven’t stopped listening to it since, including the tracks the public will now hear for the first time, Secret Love and Indiana. I’m sure you’ll love them as I have all these years. We’ll give the last word to guitarist Gannon, who was 30 when he played this concert and who’s still going strong with his own groups and recordings. "Playing with Fraser for over 20 years was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Every night I learned so much just listening to his beautifully melodic playing. This recording of a concert at the Planetarium was done shortly after the trio was formed and thanks to some glowing reviews from the States, it led to a few cross-Canada tours, many jazz festival gigs in Europe and North America and four tours of the former U.S.S.R. Thank you, Fras; I loved every minute of it!" ~  Guy MacPherson https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/frasermacpherson1

Personnel: Tenor Saxophone – Fraser; Bass – Wyatt Ruther; Guitar – Oliver Gannon; Remix – Geoff Turner 

Live at the Planetarium

---

Jessica Gall - Picture Perfect

Styles: Vocal 
Year: 2016
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 45:19
Size: 104,8 MB
Art: Front

(3:30)  1. World to Me
(5:47)  2. Picture Perfect
(4:12)  3. Real Life Girl
(4:26)  4. Impossible
(3:26)  5. You'll Feel
(5:15)  6. Sorrow Breaker
(4:26)  7. Holding On
(4:14)  8. Outbound Line
(4:48)  9. Misty Mornings
(5:12) 10. Hold up the Sky

“Life,” says Jessica Gall, “is loud enough...” She leaves the rest of the sentence to the imagination, though it’s not too difficult to figure it out. She would surely have continued with: “… my music does not have to add to it.” And loud it certainly isn’t. Her music is intense, haunting, near impossible to forget, now more so than ever. Compared to its predecessors, and contrary to its title, the album ‘Picture Perfect’ is gratifyingly imperfect  in the best sense of the word. Recorded by a native of Berlin in the capital, one might have expected an urban work. Jessica Gall smiles, “the opposite is probably true, isn’t it?” Yes, exactly. But why? “The first thing I see in the morning is a garden with apple trees and lots of birds.” In other words, she does not live near the centre of town. “I want to reflect this expansiveness in my songs, or at least hint at it.” Her need to intuit space and transform it into sound has grown in the last few years, she says. Space has become increasingly important in her music. “It has been an inspiration to me since childhood. On the new album we are aiming for a much more reduced sound.” Jessica and her musicians have travelled quite far in terms of reduction, “but I think, we still have some way to go.” The “we” in the preceding sentence includes herself and her husband Robert Matt, who has not only co-produced and co-arranged the album but also worked with Jessica on the compositions and lyrics. This new expansiveness is also reflected in her vocal delivery. Just a few years ago, a daily newspaper, one not renowned for its wit and sophistication, referred to her as “Germany’s mellowest voice”. “At the time,” says Jessica Gall, “I quite liked this expression.” Now, however, she is more willing to let her hair down, “because I have noticed that there is more to me than this mellow side, especially on stage.” Although she still stops short of screaming or screeching, “I no longer confine myself to breathy whispers. I do have a rather low voice, though, there’s nothing I can do about that.” While her first albums were rather unheedingly categorised as jazz, even undiscerning record dealers would be hard pushed to do the same nowadays. Jessica Gall herself is not really interested in categories, “what inspires me much more is being able and allowed to do music at all. Diversity appeals to me and that influences what I listen to in my private life, artists ranging from Lady Gaga to Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits and Ella Fitzgerald. What attracts me most is strong lyrics.” 

And that’s something her new album has plenty of. Probably because it was conceived in just the environment that suited Jessica. The songs were written in conjunction with her husband, “we both just start writing, luckily this can all take place at home – the home with the apple trees and birds in the garden. Of course that makes things much easier for us and our children.” One can almost hear the relief in her voice. “Then the band comes in,” she says. Aside from Robert Matt (piano and programming), this includes Johannes Feige (guitars), Björn Werra (bass) and Martell Beigang (drums). “The band record everything live and have a big influence on the final result,” says Jessica Gall, “because they help me with trying out Robert’s and my musical ideas and allow me to cast a critical eye on them.” These days, this also applies to her live performances. Jessica is “very happy that I am no longer the control freak on stage that I used to be in the studio.” On stage, the unforeseen transpires, “I used to find that really exhausting, but now it comes out as some incredible magic.” A view her fans would surely share. Born in Berlin as the daughter of musician parents, Jessica Gall studied jazz at the Hanns Eisler School of Music. Early on in her journey towards her unique style, she allowed herself the freedom to do whatever she wanted, even if it meant stepping outside her genre. To finance her studies, she sang backing vocals for Phil Collins and Sarah Connor, to name just two. “Picture Perfect” is her fifth album following on from “Just Like You” (2008), “Little Big Soul” (2010), “Riviera” (2012) and “Riviera Live Concert”. Together with Robert Matt and co-lyricists Robin Meloy Goldsby, Shannon Callahan and David Anania, Jessica Gall has carved out a niche between jazzy memories and the newly restored Olympus of the singer/songwriter world. From here on in, anything seems possible. http://www.jessicagall.de/biography/english.html

Picture Perfect

---

Herbie Mann - Waterbed

Styles: Flute Jazz
Year: 1975
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 37:42
Size: 86,7 MB
Art: Front

(3:50)  1. Waterbed
(5:35)  2. Comin' Home Baby
(4:57)  3. Paradise Music
(4:51)  4. Bang! Bang!
(4:37)  5. Deus Xango
(5:10)  6. Violet Don't Be Blue
(3:50)  7. I Got a Woman
(4:49)  8. Body Oil - Single Version

If you need an example of how jazz critics and soul/funk audiences didn't see eye to eye in the 1970s, you need look no further than Herbie Mann. Many jazz critics hated commercial Mann LPs like Discotheque and Waterbed with a passion, and saw them as examples of a gifted virtuoso dumbing his music down in order to sell more records. But young soul and funk lovers the ones who made 1975's "Hijack" a hit on black radio  were digging Mann and didn't understand why jazz snobs had it in for him. Although it contains a funky version of Ben Tucker's "Coming Home, Baby," Waterbed is a vocal-oriented soul/funk project first and foremost. In fact, it's one of the strongest commercial albums he recorded, thanks to memorable cuts that range from the infectious title song and the haunting "Body Oil" to remakes of Ray Charles' "I Got a Woman" and Joe Cuba's "Bang! Bang!." A dynamo of a singer, Cissy Houston (Whitney Houston's mother) has an excellent spot on the dusky "Violent Don't Be Blue" it's too bad she would eventually give up secular music altogether. Unfortunately, Waterbed has long been out of print, but it's worth trying to find if you're a fan of 1970s soul/funk. ~ Alex Henderson https://www.allmusic.com/album/waterbed-mw0000881633

Personnel: Herbie Mann - flute;  David Newman - tenor saxophone; Pat Rebillot - keyboards;  Jerry Friedman, Bob Mann, Hugh McCracken, Jeff Mironov - guitar;   Will Lee, Tony Levin - bass; Steve Gadd , Allan Schwartzberg , Darryl Washington - drums; Ray Barretto, Armen Halburian, Ralph MacDonald, Ray Mantilla - percussion; Anahid Ajemian, Matthew Raimondi - violin; Jean Dane - viola;  Michael Rudiakov - cello; The Hijackers: Cissy Houston, Sylvia Shemwell, Eunice Peterson - vocal

Waterbed

---

Johnathan Blake Quartet - Gone, But Not Forgotten

Styles: Jazz, Post Bop
Year: 2014
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 68:13
Size: 157,5 MB
Art: Front

(5:43)  1. Cryin' Blues
(8:06)  2. Firm Roots
(4:35)  3. Maracas Beach
(7:55)  4. All Across the City
(8:00)  5. Broski
(6:57)  6. Born Yesterday
(6:05)  7. Circle Dance
(5:16)  8. New Wheels
(5:15)  9. Anysha
(3:40) 10. The Shadower
(6:37) 11. Two for the Blues

Inspired by jazz luminaries who have recently departed, Johnathan Blake’s second album as a leader explores material by Cedar Walton, Jim Hall, Mulgrew Miller, Paul Motian, Frank Foster, Frank Wess and Eddie Harris. The NYC-based, Philly-born drummer also pays tribute to three of Philadelphia’s finest musicians: Charles Fambrough, Trudy Pitts and James “Sid” Simmons, and includes two original compositions-one dedicated to the daughter of saxophonist Jimmy Greene, Ana Grace, who was killed in the Sandy Hook tragedy, the second to gifted bassist Dwayne Burno, who passed away last year at 43. Thematically solemn, the recording nonetheless brims with a life-affirming sense of creativity and vitality. The fiery lineup features two stellar saxophonists-Mark Turner and Chris Potter-with Ben Street on bass. Sans chordal instrument, the two distinct horns are free to play with and against each other as Blake drives the proceedings with Street. Walton’s “Firm Roots” has both Turner and Potter burning; Simmons’ jazz-funk vehicle “Maracas Beach” features Potter on alto flute that, together with Turner’s tenor, creates a unique sonic palette matching the tune’s breezy brightness. For “All Across the City”which Blake performed with its composer, Jim Hall-the drummer uses a handwritten chart given to him by Hall, infusing the classic ballad with his personal harmonic touch. Blake’s propulsiveness, imagination and dexterity are showcased on Fambrough’s “Broski” (named after Art Blakey), Motian’s “Circle Dance” and his own “The Shadower.” Blake is one of the most sought-after drummers of his generation, playing alongside Tom Harrell, Oliver Lake, Kenny Barron and others; here he expresses his singular voice, not only through the choice of material and bandmates, but his adventurous, driving yet sensitive playing, infusing beloved tunes with new life and demonstrating fine compositional aptitude as well. ~ By Sharonne Cohen https://jazztimes.com/reviews/albums/johnathan-blake-gone-but-not-forgotten/
 

Personnel: Drums – Johnathan Blake; Bass – Ben Street; Tenor Saxophone, Flute [Alto Flute] – Chris Potter 

Gone, But Not Forgotten

---

Vic Juris - Two Guitars

Styles: Guitar Jazz
Year: 2019
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 62:02
Size: 143,1 MB
Art: Front

(7:04)  1. Cerise
(4:59)  2. E. S. P.
(3:48)  3. In Three for Two
(6:52)  4. To John
(5:34)  5. Sarasota
(7:03)  6. A Chant for Larry
(7:38)  7. Julia
(5:02)  8. Dreaming
(7:02)  9. Mayaguez
(6:56) 10. Kirby's Scene

The title of Vic Juris’ latest release references one of the album’s chief strengths. Largely devoted to original, recently minted tunes, it’s brimming with tonal contrasts generated by hollowbody electric and steel-string acoustic guitars (both played by Juris, but not simultaneously). When you consider the colorful sonic spectrum, the fresh themes, and the alert, subtle, sometimes propulsive support provided by bassist Jay Anderson and drummer Adam Nussbaum, it’s no shocker that Juris regards Two Guitars as one of his finest recordings and the best illustration of how the trio currently sounds live. Certainly, fans of the late John Abercrombie and Larry Coryell will want to give a listen, as album highlights include striking Juris-penned tributes to them. A close friend of both guitarists and an occasional collaborator too, Juris imbues “To John” and “Chant for Larry” with a soulful air and abiding affection. Both of these electric performances conjure a distinctly evocative mood, thanks in part to the rhythm section’s customary finesse. Elsewhere in the session, reminders of Juris’ fascination with intriguing harmonic schemes surface. For starters, there’s “Cerise,” a tricky, brush-stroked theme deftly enhanced by Anderson’s sonorous interlude and the guitarist’s spiraling flights. In more straightforward electric settings, Juris’ engaging flair for offsetting single-note runs with resonant chords often comes into play, adding texture and drive to the tight arrangements. An imaginative take of Wayne Shorter’s “E.S.P.” moves from arpeggiated lines to swift angular swing; the shimmering acoustic waltz “In Three for Two” elegantly pairs Juris and Anderson. And yet another pleasure: hearing Juris, again on acoustic, join his session mates in orchestrating a pop hit as simple (on first listen) as Lennon and McCartney’s “Julia” without ever obscuring its tuneful allure. ~ Mike Joyce https://jazztimes.com/reviews/albums/vic-juris-two-guitars-steeplechase/

Personnel: Vic Juris (guitar), Jay Anderson (bass), Adam Nussbaum (drums)

Two Guitars

---