Jason Palmer - Wondaland

Styles: Trumpet Jazz
Year: 2015
File: MP3@224K/s
Time: 63:49
Size: 102,7 MB
Art: Front

( 6:40)  1. Sir Greendown
( 9:34)  2. Neon Valley Street
(10:36)  3. 58321
( 8:43)  4. Babopbyeya
( 5:30)  5. Look Into My Eyes
( 8:31)  6. Oh, Maker
( 6:08)  7. Say You'll Go
( 8:04)  8. Wondaland

Trumpeter Jason Palmer’s intriguing new release is the second in his planned “series of homages to singers who have produced powerful music,” which began three years ago with his Minnie Riperton tribute, Take a Little Trip. Wondaland is more contemporary, celebrating the artistry of Janelle Monáe via jazzed-up arrangements of her songs, all but one drawn from the eclectic R&B star’s much-lauded 2010 album, The ArchAndroid. Palmer isn’t alone among his jazz contemporaries in admiring Monáe. She featured Esperanza Spalding on the track “Dorothy Dandridge Eyes,” from her The Electric Lady, and the theatricality of Spalding’s new Emily’s D+Evolution project, as well as her singing, both suggest Monáe’s influence. But Palmer’s album makes his admiration overt, and he’s joined by an impressive young crew of mostly current or former members of his working band at the venerable Boston club Wally’s Cafe, located just up Massachusetts Avenue from his and their alma mater, Berklee College of Music.  Luke Marantz, Dan Carpel and Lee Fish make an able rhythm section on Fender Rhodes, bass and drums, respectively, with Marantz chipping in solid solos along with deft comping. Guitarist Greg Duncan’s soloing brings to mind Kurt Rosenwinkel on “Neon Valley Street,” “BaBopByeYa” and “Look Into My Eyes.” Rising-star alto saxophonist Godwin Louis shines on uptempo tunes (“Sir Greendown,” “Neon Valley Street,” the set-ending title track) and slower ones (“57821,” “Look Into My Eyes”). Palmer’s trumpet excellence is getting to be old news, and it’s on display plenty here. But he skips taking a solo turn on “Look Into My Eyes,” and overall seems more interested in building on the beauty of Monáe’s music with his arrangements than in flashing his chops. Which keeps this charming album a bona fide homage. ~ Bill Beuttler http://jazztimes.com/articles/171187-wondaland-jason-palmer-plays-janelle-monae-jason-palmer

Personnel: Jason Palmer (trumpet), Godwin Louis (alto saxophone), Greg Duncan (guitar), Luke Marantz (Fender Rhodes), Dan Carpel (bass), Lee Fish (drums).

Wondaland

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Vince Giordano & The Nighthawks - Cheek To Cheek

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 46:05
Size: 105.5 MB
Styles: Big band
Year: 2012
Art: Front

[3:05] 1. Let Yourself Go
[3:53] 2. Cheek To Cheek
[2:48] 3. No Strings
[3:52] 4. Let's Face The Music
[3:07] 5. The Carioca
[3:07] 6. A Fine Romance
[2:46] 7. Shall We Dance
[2:34] 8. Flying Down To Rio
[4:12] 9. Night And Day
[4:07] 10. Isn't This A Lovely Day
[3:20] 11. I Won't Dance
[3:29] 12. Top Hat, White Tie And Tails
[2:52] 13. The Continental
[2:48] 14. Cet's Call The Whole Thing Off

Yet another stellar CD by Vince and his Nighthawks. This time, they explore the musicals of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and capture perfectly the grace, beauty and appeal of the music they danced to. I always have to emphasize that, unlike so many other "period" jazz bands, the Nighthawks show absolute respect for early jazz, and present it as it was back in the early days - in its authentic form, rather than in the form of caricature. This album is a great one for introducing a listener to early jazz - these pieces are all standards, whereas most of the Nighthawks' other albums focus on lesser-known, but equally great, examples. ~Danielle Bennignus

Cheek To Cheek

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Terra Hazelton Trio - That's All

Styles: Vocal Jazz
Year: 2013
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 53:13
Size: 122,5 MB
Art: Front

(5:08)  1. That's All (feat. Nathan Hiltz & Jordan O'Connor)
(2:59)  2. Down With Love (feat. Nathan Hiltz & Jordan O'Connor)
(4:03)  3. The Lure of Little Voices (feat. Nathan Hiltz & Jordan O'Connor)
(3:49)  4. This Time the Dream's On Me (feat. Nathan Hiltz & Jordan O'Connor)
(4:17)  5. Am I Blue? (feat. Nathan Hiltz & Jordan O'Connor)
(2:44)  6. You're Driving Me Crazy (feat. Nathan Hiltz & Jordan O'Connor)
(4:24)  7. Solitude (feat. Nathan Hiltz & Jordan O'Connor)
(4:58)  8. You Always Hurt the One You Love (feat. Nathan Hiltz & Jordan O'Connor)
(4:30)  9. Keeping You In Mind (feat. Nathan Hiltz & Jordan O'Connor)
(2:47) 10. You Brought a New Kind of Love To Me (feat. Nathan Hiltz & Jordan O'Connor)
(4:09) 11. I'm Confessing (that I love you) [feat. Nathan Hiltz & Jordan O'Connor]
(4:26) 12. Gettin' Some Fun Out of Life (feat. Nathan Hiltz & Jordan O'Connor)
(4:51) 13. I'm Confessing (that I love you) [feat. Nathan Hiltz & Jordan O'Connor] [alternate take]

Joy is the first word that comes to mind when Terra Hazelton sings. A popular and wonderful performer on the Toronto jazz scene, Hazelton beams with happiness when she performs. Now, she has released her third album featuring jazz classics for which she is known and new material as well including a lovely jazz ballad setting of Canadian poet Robert Service’s “The Lure of Little Voices” composed by Jeff Gladstone, a friend of hers she has known since childhood.  Recorded live off the floor with Jordan O’Connor on bass and Nathan Hiltz on guitar and ukulele, “That’s All” features classics by the team of Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg, by Duke Ellington and the ballad “Keeping You in Mind” by Mary Margaret O’Hara. O’Connor also produced, recorded and mixed the album.Born in British Colombia and raised mostly in Calgary, Hazelton is also a radio personality and an actress who has been nominated for a Genie Award.

Her career began in theatre and comedy improv. She also wrote music and formed her own rock band. Blues great Jeff Healey heard her perform at a country jam called the Melody Ranch at the Brunswick House. Although Healey was renowned as a rock performer, his first love was traditional jazz. He was opening a night club and planned to perform trumpet and guitar on Saturday matinees with his band the Jazz Wizards. “Jeff asked to meet me,” Hazelton said with a smile, “and courted me … musically. Then, he just called me one day and said `Be in Fredericton.’ He got me out of where I was, gave me a job and paid me a lot of money.” Healey also produced her debut CD “Anybody’s Baby” and played on most of the tracks. Terra toured with him as his group’s featured vocalist until his untimely death in 2008. Healey also passed on a personal habit to Terra. 

He passionately collected jazz on 78s and had a collection of approximately 50,000 in his house. Terra’s collection now numbers 3,000. “I’ve built my own shelves,” she laughed. “Everyone in the band became a record collector.” “Gimme Whatcha Got,” her second CD, was released in 2009. Featuring favorite jazz and blues material of hers, the album was produced by veteran John Sheard and features many Canadian jazz luminaries including George Koller, Michael Kaeshammer, William Sperandei, Drew Jurecka and special guests Alex Pangman, Russell DeCarle and the Polyjesters. Today, Hazelton performs frequently in Toronto with various ensembles, most notably The Hogtown Syncopators. They perform most Fridays at The Rex Hotel on Queen Street West from 4 to 6 p.m. She also has been an occasional guest host on Jazz FM 91 and, for a period, had a program called “Timeless” celebrating classic compositions from the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s from her own collection.  http://www.songandscript.ca/index.php?option=com_k2&view=ite

That's All

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Ben Sidran - Swing State

Styles: Vocal And Piano Jazz
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 41:55
Size: 96,4 MB
Art: Front

(5:19) 1. Lullaby of the Leaves
(6:10) 2. Swing State
(5:35) 3. Laura
(4:53) 4. Ain't Misbehavin'
(4:49) 5. Stompin' at the Savoy
(4:00) 6. Over the Rainbow
(5:09) 7. Tuxedo Junction
(5:57) 8. Laura (Alt. Take)

Swing State is my first all instrumental record. I’ve done instrumentals before but this is my first piano trio project. My favorite records when I was a kid were the trios of Horace Silver, Bobby Timmons, Bud Powell, and later Sonny Clark. The piano trio format was what first excited me. So circling back sixty-some years later I wanted to feel like those musicians felt when they played. I know I can’t play like them, but I can feel like them. That’s what Swing State is.

When I started thinking about the repertoire I first considered doing some of my favorite bebop compositions from the 50s, and from there I started looking at older and older material until I wound up choosing mostly songs from the 1930s. I now realize that these are the first songs I played when I started learning to play piano as a boy.

I had a Fake Book an illegal book of sheet music - that was given to me by a friend of my father’s, a piano player who had worked professionally in the 1930s. So I got my start playing all these tunes from that period. Songs like “Tuxedo Junction,” “Ain’t Misbehavin,” “Lullaby Of The Leaves,” and “Over The Rainbow.” I wasn’t even aware of it when we recorded the album, but now I can see that my reasons for choosing this repertoire run very deep.

I like the title Swing State because it describes the emotional space that the music puts you into when it swings. It’s not from your brain, it’s from your body. It’s what it feels like when that pulse - that loose, loping pulse that was at the heart of what people have always tried to do in jazz (until recently when swing is just an option). Swing used to be the thing that you wanted to establish to make people feel good.

The first time I felt this I was 6 or 7 years old and I heard a record by Jimmy Forrest called “Night Train”. It flipped me out! I heard it in an art class I went to where the teachers played us the song and asked the kids to draw what it felt like. I don’t remember my drawing, but I do remember running around the room. I never felt that way before. It set something off in me that all these years later is still there.

As human beings, we have a tendency to clench. It’s our fight or flight impulse when we’re threatened. Sometimes it’s work just to relax and to let go. You can’t really feel good unless you’re relaxed and you let go. It’s been a real challenge to do that recently. I’ve used these troubled times over the last couple of years to try my best to get in touch with my best intentions from when I was young.

For example, I always told myself that when I got to a certain age I would read all of the great books that I pretended to read when I was in college. This record is kind of a piece with that: to make a trio record filled with the songs of my childhood. As the saying goes, “leave with the one that brought you”.

I couldn’t have made this record without Billy Peterson on bass and Leo Sidran on drums. The three of us have played together in so many situations over decades that we don’t have to talk about anything. The music just comes together. We walked into the studio without any arrangements and within 10 or 15 minutes we had a fully developed conception for the record. It came together naturally, authentically and quickly.
It really reflected who I am right now. It’s not an idea that got done; it’s a done deal. http://bensidran.com/album/swing-state

Personnel: Ben Sidran, Piano; Billy Peterson, Bass; Leo Sidran, Drums

Swing State

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