Michael Feinstein & Maynard Ferguson - Big City Rhythms

Styles: Piano Jazz, Bop
Year: 1999
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 65:03
Size: 149,6 MB
Art: Front

(2:58) 1. Close Your Eyes
(5:31) 2. The Very Thought of You
(3:34) 3. Let Me Off Uptown
(5:08) 4. Girl Talk
(4:34) 5. You Can't Lose 'Em All
(3:55) 6. One Day at a Time
(5:54) 7. The Rhythm of the Blues
(5:26) 8. The One I Love Belongs to Somebody Else
(4:30) 9. Ev'rything You Want Is Here
(2:28) 10. Johnny One Note
(2:39) 11. Swing Is Back in Style
(3:27) 12. Love Is Nothin' But a Racket
(3:26) 13. Lullaby in Rhythm
(5:00) 14. Medley: When Your Lover Has Gone/The Gal That Got Away
(3:40) 15. New York, New York
(2:44) 16. How Little We Know

Michael Feinstein steps out from behind his piano to front a big band, and not just any band, but Maynard Ferguson's. Extending the jazzy course he started in his first Concord album, Michael & George, Feinstein sounds at ease whether the swing is light ("Girl Talk") or hard ("Let Me Off Uptown"). He also contributes two of his own songs ("The Rhythm of the Blues", "Swing Is Back in Style"). While occasional piercing trumpet lines remind us who the bandleader is, Ferguson doesn't spend that much time in the stratosphere partly because he's now over 70 and partly because this crack band works beautifully in support of Feinstein. Released shortly after the singer opened his New York club, Feinstein's, Big City Rhythms will get your fingers snapping. ~David Horiuchi https://www.amazon.ca/Big-City-Rhythms-Michael-Feinstein/dp/B00001ZSTC

Personnel: Piano – Earl MacDonald, Michael Feinstein; Alto Saxophone – Gary Foster, Matt Catingub; Baritone Saxophone – Sal Lozano; Bass Trombone – Bryant Byers; Drums – Albie Berk, Dave Throckmorton; Flugelhorn – Bobby Shew, Maynard Ferguson ; Guitar – Dennis Budimir; Leader – Maynard Ferguson; Tenor Saxophone – Dan Higgins, Jim Brenan; Trombone – Alex Iles, Reggie Watkins, Tom Garling; Trumpet – Adolfo Acosta, Bobby Shew, Brian Ploeger, Maynard Ferguson, Wayne Bergeron; Tuba – Jim Self

Big City Rhythms

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Allan Harris - Open Up Your Mind

Styles: Vocal Jazz
Year: 2011
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 50:12
Size: 115,3 MB
Art: Front

(4:29)  1. Can't Live My Life Without You
(5:04)  2. Hold You
(5:29)  3. Fly Me To The Moon
(3:42)  4. Color Of A Woman
(7:00)  5. There She Goes
(3:58)  6. Autumn
(3:55)  7. Shores Of Istanbul
(5:41)  8. Inner Fear
(5:34)  9. Open Up Your Mind
(5:15) 10. I Do Believe

There is Allan Harris the romantic troubadour, serving up platters of Billy Strayhorn, Ellington and Nat King Cole tunes with his distinctly Cole-esque baritone. There is also Harris the singer-storyteller, two volumes 2006’s Cross That River and its 2009 companion Cry of the Thunderbird into his vibrant saga of unsung black cowboys, their trials and triumphs. Not until now, however, as his recording career enters its third decade, has an entire album been devoted to a meeting of Harris the romantic and Harris the songwriter. The inescapable Cole-ness that defined so much of his earlier work has all but disappeared. (Intriguingly, it only surfaces on the album’s sole cover, a gently funkified “Fly Me to the Moon,” suggesting that original material unleashes a more original Harris.) Instead, he eases into a smooth R&B groove more evocative of Teddy Pendergrass and Luther Vandross. 

The material, though consistently charming, is occasionally derivative. “Color of a Woman” suggests a mellower take on Sinatra’s mid-’60s quasi-hit “Tell Her (You Love Her Each Day),” the sparkling “Hold Me” sounds as if it was plucked from the Stylistics’ ’70s songbook, and “There She Goes” echoes countless other if-only-she’d-notice-me laments. But when Harris examines more distinctive sentiments, such as the swirling, mysteriously exotic “Shores of Istanbul” or the sinister, duplicitous “Inner Fear,” the results are impressively fresh and invigorating. ~ Christopher Loudon  http://jazztimes.com/articles/28872-open-up-your-mind-allan-harris

Open Up Your Mind

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Odyssey The Band - Back In Time

Styles: Big Band
Year: 2005
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 55:23
Size: 301,1 MB
Art: Front

(4:39) 1. Last One
(6:12) 2. Open Doors
(5:52) 3. Happy Time
(5:16) 4. Little Red House
(5:29) 5. Water Tree
(5:18) 6. Love Nest
(5:45) 7. Woman Coming
(7:08) 8. Channel One
(5:09) 9. Let's Get Married
(4:30) 10. Free For Three

Every performance by guitarist James “Blood” Ulmer is a trip “back in time.” You can hear field hollers in Ulmer’s music. You can hear Africa. But you can also hear the shrieks of demons that live out beyond the free-jazz frontier. No one covers more historical and spiritual bandwidth than Ulmer, from raw backwoods blues to high-voltage thrash guitar to harmolodics learned directly from his one-time boss and landlord, Ornette Coleman. But the title of Ulmer’s new album refers to a particular past moment. In 1983 (during a brief three-album tenure with Columbia), Ulmer released a trio recording called Odyssey, with violinist Charles Burnham and drummer Warren Benbow. It has been out of print for years and it may be Ulmer’s best record. These three players had not been in a studio together for 22 years. They reunite for Back in Time and take up where they left off. Their group sonic signature still freezes you right in your chair. Burnham’s violin is often smeared through a wah-wah pedal, and Ulmer’s guitar is all whining sustains and shuddering double-stops. At the bottom, drummer Benbow kicks pure, relentless, unapologetic funk.

But any written description of Odyssey the Band is no longer valid by the time the ink dries. This group redefines itself every few moments. The opener, “Last One,” starts as the meanest of grooves, but two minutes later Ulmer’s snaking, jangling insinuations have detached themselves from Benbow’s beat, and so have Burnham’s moans and sighs. The next piece, “Open Doors,” proves that Ulmer could have gotten rich in rock ‘n’ roll. No one, not even Ulmer’s exact contemporary, Jimi Hendrix, has ever played filthier, nastier guitar. But Ulmer’s creative process is more than brute force and distortion. He goes right to the edge of the atonal abyss, where very few rock guitarists have ever dared venture. If Back in Time contained more tracks like “Open Doors,” it would be a monster. But “Love Nest” and “Channel One” are subdued, textural pieces that are content to revel in the evocative sonorities of that otherworldly guitar/violin blend. The two vocals, “Little Red House” and “Let’s Get Married,” sound like they come from a different session, restricting Ulmer’s vast instrumental abstract expressionism to a single verbal storyline. But even when he sings, Ulmer always disrupts expectation, blowing up whole verses with harmolodic riffs. And if Benbow’s gutbucket shuffles sometimes become reductive, like self-conscious simplifications, he is also capable of sliding off the beat and making you search for it. His solo on “Woman Coming” is perfect–deadpan yet erotic.

Odyssey the Band is, after all, a collective. What makes it an ideal showcase for Ulmer’s art is the transcendent hook-up with Burnham, whose reemergence on this album is the latest compelling example of the violin renaissance now occurring in jazz. (Think Billy Bang, Jenny Scheinman, Mark Feldman, Mat Maneri, et al.) Within the bare-bones trio format, Ulmer’s unison tuning enables his instrument to fill in, at least by implication, the missing bass parts. Burnham’s violin twists around Ulmer’s guitar to make a single, seething treble voice. It is an ensemble sound like no other, and engineer Bob Musso adequately captures its sting. By Thomas Conrad https://jazztimes.com/archives/odyssey-band-back-in-time/

Personnel: James "Blood" Ulmer – guitar, vocals; Charles Burnham – violin; Warren Benbow – drums

Back In Time

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Renee Rosnes - Kinds of Love

Styles: Piano Jazz
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 56:11
Size: 130,4 MB
Art: Front

(5:24) 1. Silk
(5:47) 2. Kinds of Love
(6:09) 3. In Time Like Air
(6:35) 4. The Golden Triangle
(7:29) 5. Evermore
(7:17) 6. Passing Jupiter
(5:20) 7. Life Does Not Wait (A Vida Não Espera)
(6:35) 8. Swoop
(5:31) 9. Blessings in a Year of Exile

Renee Rosnes has a reinvigorated appreciation for the many different shapes that love can take.With her new album Kinds of Love, the Canadian pianist and composer reflects on the many forms of love in her own life of a romantic partner, of family members, of nature, of the arts and of the close relationships she’s forged with fellow musicians. Kinds of Love features an all-star quintet with saxophonist Chris Potter, bassist Christian McBride, drummer Carl Allen, and percussionist Rogério Boccato.

For many of them, the recording date was one of their first times back in a studio after the long silence of 2020. During that time, Rosnes had taken the opportunity to write a full album’s worth of original compositions with these particular musicians in mind. “I’ve tried to look at the pandemic as a gift of time, and the knowledge that I would soon be recording with my friends inspired much of the music,” Rosnes says. “It was thrilling to experience the humanity of making music again in the moment. Each of these musicians are profound, humble virtuosos and, on a human level, enlightened spirits. Kinds of Love is a reunion of sorts for Rosnes, Potter and McBride, who last recorded together on Rosnes’s acclaimed Blue Note release As We Are Now in 1997. Allen enters the fold after having performed with Rosnes many times over the years, while Boccato is the pianist’s most recent acquaintance.

“We are longtime friends who share a lot of history and camaraderie,” Rosnes says. “Having an unusual amount of quietude to work kept me creatively motivated during the past year. As I composed, I thought about each musician’s essence, and was truly inspired by all the possibilities.”

Kinds of Love is Rosnes’s first album of her own original material since the 2018 releases Beloved of the Sky and Ice on the Hudson, the latter a joint effort with lyricist David Hajdu. However, Rosnes made a major splash in 2020 as the musical director of Artemis, the international supergroup whose debut album was one of the most critically acclaimed jazz releases of the year.” https://jazz.fm/renee-rosnes-kinds-of-love-new-album/

Kinds of Love

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