Jacob Fischer - Guitarist

Styles: Guitar Jazz
Year: 2012
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 70:18
Size: 163,4 MB
Art: Front

(3:27) 1. Douce Ambience
(4:59) 2. Detour Ahead
(5:16) 3. Jean de Fleur
(5:14) 4. Gentle Rain
(4:02) 5. Brother Joseph
(3:44) 6. For My Lady
(4:30) 7. Motion
(4:25) 8. Sharing the Blues
(3:41) 9. Swing 39
(3:01) 10. My Serenade
(6:01) 11. Seven Come Eleven
(4:13) 12. West Coast Blues
(5:07) 13. Oriental Shuffle
(5:52) 14. Corner Pocket
(3:05) 15. Kärleksvals
(3:35) 16. Backwaters

On this superb recording, the supremely gifted and surprisingly eclectic Danish artist Jacob Fischer has chosen to interpret pieces by fellow guitarists. In recent years, Fischer has been identified with the Django Reinhardt«s tradition, and several of the songs in this well-chosen set are by Reinhardt or evoke his aura. But Fischer«s personal take on Reinhardt, as well as his inclusion of works by Jimmy Raney, Grant Green, Wes Montgomery, and others suggests that the guitarist draws on a much more varied musical palette. Jazz fans should be grateful to him and the rest of this group for creating music that reinforces the timelessness, artistic honesty, variety, vitality, and continued creative potential of small-group swing. From the album notes by Ed Berger, who retired in 2011 after more than thirty years at the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies to pursue freelance writing and photography. He is the author of biographies of Benny Carter and George Duvivier, and is currently writing a book about trumpeter Joe Wilder.

Personnel: Jacob Fischer: acoustic guitar; Bucky Pizzarelli: 7-string guitar; Antti Sarpila: clarinet, soprano sax; Nicki Parrott: bass; Eddie Metz: drums

Guitarist

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Maggie Herron - Your Refrain

Styles: Vocal And Piano Jazz
Year: 2020
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 37:49
Size: 87,4 MB
Art: Front

(4:57) 1. Whatnot
(3:45) 2. He Can't Even Lay an Egg
(4:17) 3. Your Refrain
(5:19) 4. Watching the Crows
(2:24) 5. In Case of Love
(3:17) 6. I Can't Seem to Find My Man
(5:00) 7. Both Sides Now
(4:04) 8. Touch
(4:43) 9. God Bless the Child

Hawaii’s Award-Winning Vocalist, Pianist, and Songwriter Maggie Herron’s Sixth Album, Your Refrain, is a gorgeous, witty, heart-bearing set of original songs written with her late daughter, Dawn Herron, to whom she dedicates the album.

Recorded during the shelter in place order, the album features a dazzling cast of collaborators, including pianist Larry Goldings, guitarist Larry Koonse, saxophonist Bob Sheppard, and arrangers Geoffrey Keezer, Gillian Margot, and Bill Cunliffe. Pianist, Maggie Herron’s 2019 project, Renditions, won the Na Hoku Hanohano Award for Jazz Album Of The Year. The album revealed the jazz-steeped singer/songwriter as a beguiling interpreter of standards. Her poignantly enthralling new album Your Refrain was released on her Herron Song Records label and captures a creatively charged mother-and-daughter communion cut short by tragedy.

A luminous presence on Hawaii’s jazz scene for more than four decades, Herron has earned national renown as a gifted singer/songwriter. Less known is that she collaborated with her daughter, lyricist Dawn Herron, on many of her songs. They were in the midst of a fruitful patch of writing when a bicycle accident took Dawn’s life on April 5, 2020. She was 49 and left a husband and two teenage sons. Deep in mourning and on pandemic-induced hiatus from her eight-year tenure as a resident musician in the Halekulani Hotel-Waikiki, Herron decided to channel her love and grief into recording her recent collaborations with Dawn.

The title track, “Your Refrain,” is a powerful song about loss, but the album is brimming with life, wit, and humor. The opening track, “WhatNot,” is a bluesy ode to melancholy, featuring the brilliant pianist Larry Goldings and the superb, well-traveled tandem of bassist David Enos and drummer John Ferraro. The trio accompanies Herron on the hilarious “He Can’t Even Lay An Egg,” a sly piece of funk on which Dawn puts a fowl spin on the war of the sexes, and “I Can’t Seem to Find My Man,” a playfully wry piece that combines Frishbergian detail with Lennon and McCartney tunefulness.

The great Los Angeles saxophonist Bob Sheppard contributes exquisite soprano sax work on “Watching the Crows,” an uncommonly poetic affirmation about attaining insight into oneself. On first hearing of that song earlier this year, with Maggie backing herself on piano, Dawn told her, “mom, it’s my favorite collaboration to date”. Maggie had spent years coaxing her daughter to work on songs together. “Dawn had been writing short stories and poems most of her life and I kept asking her to write lyrics for me. I knew she would be great at it. With this newest release we now have 19 songs recorded as co-writers,” Herron says. The first two songs they wrote together were the romantic love song “Je T’aimerais”, arranged by Geoffrey Keezer, and “Le Printemps est Arrivé” where Dawn drew on her fluency in French. It is a graceful piece Maggie recorded with trumpet star Rick Braun, who also joined her on vocals. Both songs are on her 2014 album Good Thing.More......... https://bigislandmusic.net/award-winning-vocalist-maggie-herron-releases-sixth-album-your-refrain/

Your Refrain

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Jimmy Heath - Peer Pleasure

Styles: Saxophone Jazz
Year: 1987
File: MP3@256K/s
Time: 47:50
Size: 87,7 MB
Art: Front

(7:23) 1. Trane connection
(6:15) 2. Song for Ben Webster
(7:01) 3. You Can See
(6:01) 4. Is That So?
(6:25) 5. Ellington's Stray Horn
(8:03) 6. Forever Sonny
(6:40) 7. I Waited for You

The most unusual aspect of this CD is that Jimmy Heath, in addition to his usual tenor and soprano, also plays alto (his original instrument) on two of the six numbers. The material pays tribute to John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Ben Webster (an Ernie Wilkins original), and Dizzy Gillespie, and "Ellington's Stray Horn" is included along with a Monty Alexander original. Two songs are played by Heath with guitarist Tony Purrone, bassist Stafford James and drummer Akira Tana; pianist Larry Willis makes the group a quintet on one piece, and trumpeter Tom Williams expands the band to a sextet for the three remaining selections. The largely straight-ahead set benefits from the changing instrumentation and the fresh material, and Jimmy Heath (60 at the time) shows that he was still very much in prime form.~ Scott Yanow https://www.allmusic.com/album/peer-pleasure-mw0000651348

Personnel: Tenor Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone, Alto Saxophone – Jimmy Heath; Trumpet, Flugelhorn – Tom Williams; Acoustic Bass – Stafford James; Drums – Akira Tana; Electric Guitar – Tony Purrone ; Piano – Larry Willis

Peer Pleasure

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