Amina Figarova, Kim Prevost - On Canal Street

Styles: Vocal
Year: 2002
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 48:04
Size: 112,0 MB
Art: Front

(4:51) 1. Canal Street Blues
(4:46) 2. Fever
(4:50) 3. Averacruz
(3:53) 4. No Means No
(5:02) 5. New Orleans Samba
(3:43) 6. Pass the Word
(4:05) 7. Midnight
(4:17) 8. Night Dream
(4:07) 9. Love Is the Cure
(4:49) 10. Selena
(3:36) 11. Meant to Be

Amina Figarova is without doubt one of the most productive jazz composers and talented jazz piano players from Europe. Now living in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, born in Baku, Azerbaijan, Amina started playing piano and composing at a very early age. She studied as a classical concert pianist at the Baku Conservatory, jazz performance at the Rotterdam Conservatory and the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Amina Figarova performs with her own group at many jazz festivals and jazz clubs around the world, such as The North Sea Jazz Festival, New Orleans Jazz Festival, Capetown International Jazzfestival, Salvador Bahia Jazz Festival, Brasil, JakArt Festival, Indonesia, Yoshi's in Oakland, CA, Blue Note jazz club New York, and has given concerts in Israel, Europe, United Arabs Emirates, Mexico, USA, Azerbaijan, and many others.

Recorded her first CD “Attraction” in 1994, a start of a wonderful career as pianist and composer, a CD with all compositions and arrangements of Amina, almost all the music on her CDs are composed by herself. In 1998 she was invited to study at the Thelonious Monk Jazz Colony in Aspen, Colorado. A summer camp for the most talented young musicians. That same year she released her second album “Another Me”, a mix of funk, fusion and R&B, influenced by jazz, reggae and latin music, again with all original compositions. In March 2000 she was invited as artist in residence for the Dmitri Matheny Home Season in the San Fransisco Bay Area. That is how the Amina Figarova International Band got started, now released two live recorded CDs. Also the colobaration with Kim Prevost and Bill Solley from New Orleans resulted in the recording “On Canal Street”. Amina is touring and performing often with Denise Jannah. Amina performed with the American All Stars Band with James Moody, Nathan Davis, Claudio Roditi, Larry Corryell, and Wynard Harper.

“Come escape with me” (Munich Records, MRCD 465) showcases Amina's exceptional compositional and arranging skills. Her music (all of the CD's 12 tunes are written by her) is tasteful and refined, showcasing her talents as well as those of her band - a three-piece horn section and one amazing flute player. This new release is the most logic follow up of her septet CD releases “Firewind” and “Night Train”, celebrating the fifth anniversary of her septet. At the moment Amina tours with two different groups. Her septet features other wonderful musicians from The Netherlands and Belgium, and her Amina Figarova International Quintet. “Come escape with me” is recorded in the Netherlands with Marcel Reijs on trumpet, Kurt van Herck on tenor sax, Tom Beek on alto sax, Wiro Mahieu on bass, Chris Strik on drums and Amina's husband Bart Platteau on a whole scala of flutes. The music on this Munich Records CD is a great example of Amina's musical and compositional talents. She takes you to unknown areas to let you taste a different atmosphere, always with her own style and magical swing.

“Come escape with me” is allready for three weeks in the Top 10 of the Jazzweek airplay chart with # 7 as highest ranking! https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/aminafigarova

Personnel: Amina Figarova – Keyboards; Kim Prevost – Vocals; Bart Plateau – Flutes; Bill Solley – Guitar and Synthesizers; Ricky Sebastian – Drums; Roland Guerin – Bass; Kenyatta Simon – Percussion; Cope Kirkland – Rap; Sanford Hinderlie – Synthesizers

On Canal Street

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Melody Gardot - Live At The Olympia Paris

Styles: Vocal, Guitar And Piano Jazz
Year: 2016
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 101:50
Size: 233,4 MB
Art: Front

( 6:44) 1. Don't Misunderstand
( 7:09) 2. Same To You
( 6:03) 3. She Don't Know
( 7:12) 4. Bad News
(11:29) 5. March For Mingus
(13:32) 6. Morning Sun
( 6:48) 7. Les Etoiles
( 4:42) 8. Baby I'm A Fool
( 8:23) 9. Who Will Comfort Me
(10:24) 10. Preacherman
(19:22) 11. It Gonna Come

Melody Gardot has chosen a Parisian venue of choice, the august Olympia, for her first DVD. With a brass section, organ, guitar to which she adds her own stylish guitar and piano playing and drums she has a full backing within which to serenade her audience.

The nature of the serenading can be artful or intense and the funky patterns of Same To You definitely fall within the latter category, not least because of a storming and stormy tenor sax solo. The Jazz Soul inflections of her instrumental backing they’re well drilled to a man offer Gardot a patter-into-parlando introduction to She Don’t Know at the end of which the lighting rig is focused solely on the striking singer, complete with scarf around her head, black shades, fedora, skinny black trousers, and leather coat. The slow burning blues riffs of Bad News, on which Gardot straps on her easy rider, are accompanied by a voluble tenor solo though because the mic is stationed directly over the bell, it means that the tone suffers. Sitting at an upright piano for March for Mingus, appropriately accompanied by an upright bass, she includes parlando in French in a very theatrical, even knowing way.

But her rapport with the audience is spellbinding an effect not wholly replicated by a moment where one of the saxists stuffs two saxophones into his mouth in clear emulation of Roland Kirk. The Gospel cum Nina Simone inspiration on Morning Sun seems clear enough, Gardot’s vibrato taking on a somewhat insistent edge, whilst Les Étoiles is another attractive French-language chanson, where muted trumpet, bass clarinet and acoustic guitar bring out plenty of fine accompanying figures and make the band sound larger than it truly is.

Wa-wa trumpet gets on down on Who Will Comfort Me I wish there had been more trumpet solos and fewer sax ones and this lively invigorating number prefaces Preacherman where, surprisingly there’s a very brief moment of picture break-up. The cooking outro is the encore, It Gonna Come, with all the band members namechecked and the audience quite rightly on their feet. Gardot is one of today’s most elusive yet understatedly charismatic singers influenced as much by pop mainstream as by jazz as by Parisian confessional and chanson and Motown. She serves up this gumbo as only she knows how. Good camera work (in the main) allows one to enjoy her in the ‘intimacy’ of a filmed concert.~Jonathan Woolf http://www.musicweb-international.com/jazz/2016/Melody_Gardot_DVD.htm

Personnel: Melody Gardot (voice, guitar, piano,): Chuck Staab (drums, musical director): Mitchell Long (guitar): Shareef Clayton (trumpet): Korey Riker (baritone and tenor saxophone): Irwin Hall (tenor and alto saxophones, bass clarinet): Edwin Livingston (bass): Devin Greenwood (keyboards)

Live At The Olympia Paris

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Darius Brubeck - Before it's too Late

Styles: Piano Jazz
Year: 2004
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 57:37
Size: 133,0 MB
Art: Front

( 4:44)  1. Before It's too Late
( 6:01)  2. Sad Song
( 6:55)  3. Mighty Like the Blues
( 6:20)  4. Shadows
( 3:58)  5. Across Your Dreams
( 5:22)  6. Nombelelo
( 6:16)  7. Ravely Street
(14:10)  8. Mamazala
( 3:48)  9. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

Darius Brubeck and his brothers Chris and Dan, as Brubecks Play Brubeck, have done international tours annually since the group was formed (with Dave O’Higgins on sax) for a UK concert tour in 2010. Pianist, composer and Fulbright Professor of Jazz Studies, Brubeck was the Director of the Centre for Jazz & Popular Music at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa until 2005 when he moved to London and established the highly successful Darius Brubeck Quartet. After graduating from Wesleyan University where he studied ethnomusicology and history of religion, Brubeck worked free-lance, started his own bands, and toured the world with his famous father and brothers as a member of Two Generations of Brubeck and The New Brubeck Quartet (Dave, Darius, Chris and Dan Brubeck).   

He moved to South Africa in 1983, to initiate the first Jazz Studies Degree offered by an African university, gaining international recognition for his work in education and for his recordings and concerts with South African musicians. His regular, London-based group, The Darius Brubeck Quartet plays all around the UK and Europe. Following the success of their recent recording, Cathy’s Summer, they will be releasing a new CD, Years Ago soon. https://www.dariusbrubeck.com/brubecks-play-brubeck-3/bpb-band-biographies/

Before it's too Late

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Bob Wilber, Ove Lind - Vital Wilber & Lilting Lind (Remastered)

Styles: Clarinet, Saxophone jazz, Swing
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 60:35
Size: 140,4 MB
Art: Front

(2:51) 1. Jubilee
(3:31) 2. I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself a Letter
(4:51) 3. Am I Blue
(3:06) 4. Nice Work If You Can Get It
(2:43) 5. My Heart Stood Still
(4:52) 6. After You've Gone
(3:16) 7. The Land of the Midnight Sun
(3:43) 8. Clarion Song
(4:03) 9. Sunday
(3:44) 10. Treasure
(2:37) 11. Limehouse Blues
(3:26) 12. There's a Small Hotel
(3:22) 13. How Long Has This Been Going On
(3:55) 14. Sugar
(3:35) 15. Don't Get Around Much Anymore
(3:00) 16. Good Friday Bounce
(3:50) 17. East of the Sun

Robert Sage Wilber, clarinetist, saxophonist, composer, arranger, and educator, was born in New York City on March 15, 1928. He grew up in a musical household and recalls being fascinated with Ellington's recording of “Mood Indigo” at the age of three. In 1935, Wilber moved to Scarsdale, NY and at 13 he began formal clarinet study. He started playing jazz in high school and often visited New York City's 52nd Street absorbing the music of traditional jazzmen such as Pee Wee Russell, Sidney Bechet, Muggsy Spanier, and modern jazzmen Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker. Early on, he dedicated his life to jazz at the expense of formal college studies.

Wilber studied with Sidney Bechet in 1946, living with him for several months and sitting in with him occasionally at Jimmy Ryan's. In 1948, Bechet sent him in his stead to Nice, France to perform at the first-ever jazz festival, after which Wilber toured with Mezz Mezzrow. In 1946 Wilber formed The Wildcats and recorded sides for Commodore and, with Bechet, for Columbia. In Boston from 1948 to 1951, he led a group of veteran jazzmen at the Savoy Cafe and also played at George Wein's Storyville as a headliner with the De Paris brothers and Sid Catlett.

Wilber entered the Army in 1951, after which he studied with modernists Lennie Tristano and Lee Konitz. He also studied classical clarinet with Leon Russinoff for five years. During this time, Wilber had significant gigs with Eddie Condon and Bobby Hackett, and formed his own group, The Six, focusing on combining traditional and modern jazz elements. In 1958-59, he toured twice with the Benny Goodman Orchestra. In 1968, Wilber joined the World's Greatest Jazz Band (WGJB) for six years. He began composing and writing more, and his music reflected increasingly progressive elements. In 1975, Wilber formed the highly regarded Soprano Summit along with co-leader Kenny Davern. This quintet featured both early jazz pieces and original music. The WGJB and Soprano Summit experience combined with work Wilber had done for Duke Ellington conventions in the 1960s reflected an increasing interest in jazz repertory work, not only recreating jazz from original scores but allowing for modern variations. In the 1970s and 1980s, he produced concerts for the New York Jazz Repertory Company and directed the Smithsonian Jazz Repertory Ensemble.

In 1981, Wilber formed Bechet Legacy, a group dedicated to the musical heritage of Sidney Bechet. Wilber was the musical director for the soundtrack to the movie The Cotton Club (for which he won a Grammy in 1986) and for the Broadway show Mr. Jelly Lord. In 1988, he assembled an orchestra and recreated the famous 1938 Benny Goodman concert at Carnegie Hall as well as at London's Royal Albert Hall. In 1989, Wilber organized and performed a Royal Ellington concert for the Queen, featuring the performance debut of Ellington's “The Queen's Suite.” In 1992, he persuaded Artie Shaw to visit England to conduct a concert at Royal Festival Hall in which Wilber played Shaw’s “Concerto for Clarinet” among other classical and jazz selections. An internationally renowned and consummate jazz musician, Bob Wilber's work is not finished. He continues to travel and perform extensively featuring his own original music as well as that of Bechet, Morton, Ellington, Goodman, and Henderson, among others. Wilber has performed with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra (LCJO) several times in recent years, most recently as musical director for the LCJO Benny Goodman Centenary concert (May 2009). He has helped make jazz repertory an integral part of jazz education around the world. In 2010, Wilber was selected as the headliner for the University of New Hampshire’s historic 200th concert in the Traditional Jazz Series. https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/bobwilber

Vital Wilber & Lilting Lind

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