Come Sunday

Come Sunday
Charlie Haden | Format: Audio CD

Two Jazz legends team up for an unforgettable and moving album of classic spirituals. Bassist Charlie Haden and the late pianist Hank Jones. follow up their 1995 classic duet recording Steal Away , with this original album of great songs of power, including Duke Ellington's famous Come Sunday. Come Sunday was a collaboration between these two longtime friends and colleagues. Hank Jones died in 2010 at the age of 91, shortly after completing this album. Jones is considered the consummate jazz pianist and renowned as a soloist, accompanist, composer and arranger. In a career spanning over 70 years, Hank Jones worked with nearly every major jazz musician from Benny Goodman to Ella Fitzgerald to Diana Krall.

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The River of Anyder

The River of Anyder
Stefano Battaglia | Format: Audio CD

The pure water of the Anyder River flowed through Sir Thomas More's "Utopia". Italian pianist Stefano Battaglia celebrates it here, in music uncontaminated by jazz trends: "I set myself the task of writing songs and dances uninfluenced by the sophistication of contemporary musical languages, striving to shape pieces that might have been played on archaic instruments a thousand years ago. I think of it as a kind of music before the idioms." If the piano trio remains a modern institution and the improvisational group understanding shared by Battaglia, Maiore and Dani cannot help but be of-the-moment, the musicians have nonetheless made an album that feels "timeless".

The compositions here are mostly named after mythical and legendary locations, each of them conferring specific atmospheres. Fictional and real-world place names are interspersed. From Minas Tirith, Tolkien's White City, the players travel, via the Utopian river, to the sacred mountain of Ararat and onward to Bensalem, mythical island in Sir Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, somewhere to the West of Peru, where an enlightened citizenry labours to improve man's understanding: "We have twelve that sail into foreign countries under the names of other nations (for our own we conceal), who bring us the books and abstracts, and patterns of experiments of all other parts."

In his selection of literary and philosophical quotes for the CD booklet, Battaglia casts a net that similarly brings far-flung traditions into juxtaposition, referencing Rumi and Rimbaud, Hildegard von Bingen and Black Elk of the Oglala Sioux: these are just some of the names that fire the composer's imagination. Yet it is not a musical patchwork that he has created from such influences but an original concept that seems to spring from a strong, organic centre. The trio has its own deep pulses and its own methodology. There is a robust lyricism at work as modal improvisations unfold. CD booklet includes text fragments from Thomas More, Jalal ad-Din Rumi, Francis Bacon, Arthur Rimbaud, Hildegard von Bingen, and Black Elk, plus photography by Caterian di Perri.

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Into Somethin

Into Somethin
Beegie Adair | Format: Audio CD

Jazz pianist, Beegie Adair, plays timeless pop hits of the 1960's Jazz great HELEN MERRILL salutes her "Inventive jazz sense, her wonderful sense of time and improvised melody." CHRISTOPHER LOUDEN of Jazz Times Magazine says Adair is "An accomplished artist with a delicate touch."

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Roy-Alty

Roy-Alty
Roy Haynes (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Roy Haynes celebrated his 86th birthday on March 13, 2011. Had the veteran drummer retired from music 30 or 40 years earlier, he still would have gone down in history as someone with a long list of accomplishments. But thankfully, Haynes continued to perform well into his eighties. Recorded in early 2011 (when Haynes was still 85), Roy-Alty is a solid hard bop/post-bop outing that boasts well-known guests like Chick Corea (who is heard on acoustic piano) and trumpeter Roy Hargrove. Corea is featured on two selections: the dusky `All the Bars Are Open` and Thelonious Monk`s `Off Minor,` while Hargrove is heard on six of the ten tracks (including the insistent `Passion Dance,` the standard `These Foolish Things,` the Afro-Cuban favorite `Tin Tin Deo,` and Miles Davis` `Milestones`). Most of the songs on Roy-Alty find Haynes employing a group that he bills as the Fountain of Youth (alto saxophonist Jaleel Shaw, pianist Martin Bejerano, and bassist David Wong), and while the personnel can vary from track to track on this 66-minute CD, the constant is Haynes` skillful drumming. After all these years, Haynes hasn`t lost his touch as either a drummer or a group leader.

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Tribe

Tribe
Enrico Rava | Format: Audio CD

Since his return to ECM with Easy Living in 2003, the grand master of Italian jazz has gone from strength to strength, in a series of truly exceptional recordings including Tati, The Words and The Days, The Third Man, and New York Days. Enrico Rava is currently playing at a peak of lyrical invention, and his newest Italian quintet is amongst his strongest ensembles. Gianluca Petrella, Rising Star Trombonist in the Down Beat Critics Poll of 2005, is retained from The Words and the Days line-up and he has a front-chemistry with Rava which burns in this project. Fast-moving, quick-witted exchanges abound. Enrico has always encouraged younger musicians, and pianist Giovanni Guidi (born 1985) is a real find, a player of creativity and imagination: "When I notice the gifts of a young musician, I immediately involve him in my groups. This is not motivated by altruism," Rava insists. "Giovanni Guidi is like Bollani and Petrella: he astounds me every time." Bassist Gabriele Evangelista (b. 1988), another young player of promise, works splendidly alongside widely-experienced drummer Fabrizio Sferra, whose resume includes work with Chet Baker, Paul Bley and Kenny Wheeler. Material on Tribe includes new and old tunes by Rava and a brace of collective improvisations. The album was recorded at Arte Suono Studio in Udine in October 2010, with Manfred Eicher producing.

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