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MartinLogan Renaissance ESL 15A
Paradigm Persona Series
Electrocompaniet - AW 800M
Electrocompaniet - AW 300M
Arendal 1528
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Arendal 1528

CD Music

BassDrumBone: "The Long Road"

Details
CD music

January 2017

Auricle 16/17
Format: CD (2)

Musical Performance
*****

Sound Quality
****

Overall Enjoyment
****

For both commercial and musical reasons, longstanding bands are rare in improvised music. The trio BassDrumBone, which celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2017, is unusual, then, in terms of longevity, but even more unusual in instrumental makeup. Bassist Mark Helias, 66; drummer Gerry Hemingway, 61; and trombonist Ray Anderson, 64, were all up-and-coming young men in 1977 when they got together for the first time to play in New Haven, Connecticut. Hemingway, a New Haven native, was already teaching and developing a unique approach to codifying non-traditional percussion sounds. Helias was studying at Yale, and Anderson was a nascent member of Anthony Braxton’s group. Hemingway thought they might gel as a trio, and clearly they did.

Read more …

Keith Jarrett: "A Multitude of Angels"

Details
CD music

December 2016

ECM 5702466
Format: CD (4)

Musical Performance
*****

Sound Quality
****

Overall Enjoyment
****

David Mott -- baritone saxophone master, former music department head at York University, and martial artist -- once told me that the best musicians play without ego. By creating an unmediated flow of ideas, artists like John Coltrane channel something approaching the divine.

Read more …

Norah Jones: "Day Breaks"

Details
CD music

October 2016

Blue Note B002520702
Format: CD

Musical Performance
****

Sound Quality
****

Overall Enjoyment
****

I have a terrible track record for predicting which album will become a hit, but there were a couple of hints that Norah Jones’s 2002 debut release, Come Away with Me, would attract attention -- although, even then, I could not have predicted the eight Grammy Awards it garnered. I doubt if anyone anticipated that.

Read more …

Metalwood: "Twenty"

Details
CD music

September 2016

Cellar Live 020116
Format: CD

Musical Performance
****

Sound Quality
*****

Overall Enjoyment
****

By definition, improvised music lives in the moment, and jazz, the musical genre most closely associated with improvisation, is an art form obsessed with constant innovation. It is unusual for jazz to look backward, but two nostalgic trends -- both related to trumpeter Miles Davis -- broke with tradition and were surprisingly long-lived.

Read more …

Nels Cline: "Lovers"

Details
CD music

August 2016

Blue Note Records 002505102
Format: CD

Musical Performance
****

Sound Quality
*****

Overall Enjoyment
****

How you know guitarist Nels Cline might vary. You might know him as the leader of the archly named Nels Cline Singers -- a trio that includes no vocalists -- from his sonically expressive improvisational collaborations with a wide range of artists from Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore to action painter Norton Wisdom, or as a member of the rock band Wilco. In almost every setting, he is a disruptor: slashing shards of noise across a pleasant tonal environment here, cranking the volume there. Inspired by sources as diverse as Jimi Hendrix and Andrew Hill, Cline has extraordinarily open ears and a deep set of technical skills.

Read more …

Paul Simon: "Stranger to Stranger"

Details
CD music

Concord 39803
Format: CD

Musical Performance
****

Sound Quality
****

Overall Enjoyment
****

For centuries, some of the most important contributions to our understanding of social mores and manners have come not from historians, but from creative observers who have worked in various art forms. From Samuel Pepys to E.B. White, we have used the writings of people like these to go deeper into how life was experienced by those who lived through particular times.

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The Allman Brothers Band: "Live from A&R Studios, New York, August 26, 1971"

Details
CD music

June 2016

The Allman Brothers Band Recording Company 1116
Format: CD

Musical Performance
****

Sound Quality
***

Overall Enjoyment
****

Few rock bands had the stylistic scope or instrumental prowess of the original Allman Brothers Band: guitarists Duane Allman and Dickey Betts, organist/vocalist Gregg Allman, bassist Berry Oakley, and drummers Butch Trucks and Jai Johanny Johanson. From the spring of 1969 to October, 1971, the band grew steadily from an energetic-but-raw group of disparate forces to a highly disciplined-yet-uninhibited band of improvisers.

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Pat Metheny: "The Unity Sessions"

Details
CD music

May 2016

Nonesuch 554569
Format: CD

Musical Performance
****

Sound Quality
****

Overall Enjoyment
****

While jazz has no shortage of solo performances, stemming from the European classical tradition of the virtuoso recital, it is primarily a collective music. Improvisation gains currency when one player takes inspiration from another, adding to what has already been played, while ensemble work is at the very core of what gives the music its power -- both in small groups and, most particularly, big bands.

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Wes Montgomery: "In the Beginning"

Details
CD music

April 2016

Resonance Records HCD-2014
Format: CD

Musical Performance
***

Sound Quality
**

Overall Enjoyment
***

One of the few authentic things in Don Cheadle’s gangster-fantasy bio-pic of Miles Davis is the trumpeter’s insistence that jazz was, first and foremost, social music. In the years before, during and after World War II, in particular, jazz was the soundtrack of black American lives. Before the rise of urban blues and R&B in the ’50s, it was jazz that was played on commercial jukeboxes in bars, on record players at house parties, and by combos at live music venues. It was, quite literally, ubiquitous in the air, especially in the large, industrial centers. In Indianapolis, Wes Montgomery started strumming a four-string tenor guitar at the age of 12, and seven years later, in 1942 -- inspired by brilliant, young guitarist, Charlie Christian, who died around that time -- switched to a full-size electric guitar.

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Charles Lloyd & the Marvels: "I Long to See You"

Details
CD music

March 2016

Blue Note Records B002427702
Format: CD

Musical Performance
****

Sound Quality
***

Overall Enjoyment
****

Veteran jazz saxophonist Charles Lloyd, who turns 78 on March 15, views himself as someone who stands at the crossroads of America’s folk musics: country, blues, R&B, and jazz. As quoted in California-based journalist Joe Woodard’s 2015 book, Charles Lloyd: A Wild, Blatant Truth, Lloyd believes that growing up in Memphis on the Mississippi River in the 1940s was “the right place, at the right time. There were great masters there.” Among those masters Lloyd played with were B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, Johnny Ace, and contemporaries Phineas Newborn and Booker Little.

Read more …

  1. David Bowie: "Blackstar"
  2. John Abercrombie: "The First Quartet"
  3. Billy Gibbons and the BFGs: "Perfectamundo"
  4. Keith Richards: "Crosseyed Heart"
  5. Blue Buddha: "Blue Buddha"; Dave Douglas Quintet: "Brazen Heart"
  6. Jason Isbell: "Something More Than Free"
  7. Ryan Adams: "Ten Songs from Live at Carnegie Hall"
  8. Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell: "The Traveling Kind"
  9. Laura Marling: "Short Movie"
  10. Ted Kooshian: "Clowns Will Be Arriving"
  11. Suzie LeBlanc: "La Veillée de Noël"
  12. The Villains: "A Little Something for the Pain"
  13. Henry Mancini: "Music for Peter Gunn"
  14. Barb Jungr: "Hard Rain: The Songs of Bob Dylan & Leonard Cohen"
  15. Jeremy Fox: "With Love"
  16. Will Kimbrough: "Sideshow Love"
  17. A.J. Croce: "Twelve Tales"
  18. The Iveys: "Jenna's Song"
  19. The Dave Miller Trio with Rebecca DuMaine: "Better Than Anything"
  20. Bob Dorough: "Eulalia"
  21. Charlotte de Rothschild and Danielle Perrett: "Christmas Lullabies"
  22. Tchaikovsky/Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn: "Nutcracker Suites"
  23. Tianna Hall and Chris Cortez: "Noel"
  24. Tim Warfield: "Tim Warfield’s Jazzy Christmas"
  25. Gina Kronstadt: "Come Over"
  26. The Swingle Singers: "Weather to Fly"
  27. Tierney Sutton: "After Blue"
  28. Cheryl Bentyne and Mark Winkler: "West Coast Cool"
  29. Lorraine Feather: "Attachments"
  30. Lyn Stanley: "Lost in Romance"
  31. Randi Tytingvåg: "Lights Out"
  32. Vincent Cross: "A Town Called Normal"
  33. Nancy Harms: "Dreams in Apartments"
  34. Abigail Riccards: "Every Little Star"
  35. George Shearing & Don Thompson: "George Shearing at Home"
  36. Matthew Morrison: "Where It All Began"
  37. Thisbe Vos: "Under Your Spell"
  38. Mustered Courage: "Powerlines"
  39. Denise King & Olivier Hutman: "Give Me The High Sign"
  40. Thomas Gansch and Georg Breinschmid: "Gansch & Breinschmid Live"
  41. Ben Sidran: "Don’t Cry for No Hipster"
  42. Raquel Bitton: "Rhythm of the Heart"
  43. Frank Vignola & Vinny Raniolo: "Melody Magic"
  44. Laila Salins: "Elevator into the Sky"
  45. Tim Mahoney Band: "Shine Through"
  46. The Summarily Dismissed: "To Each!"
  47. Will Scruggs Jazz Fellowship: "Song of Simeon: A Christmas Journey"
  48. Dallas Wind Symphony; Jerry Junkin, Conductor: "Horns for the Holidays"
  49. Jacqui Sutton: "Notes from the Frontier: A Musical Journey"
  50. Barluath: "Source"
  51. Letizia Gambi: "Introducing Letizia Gambi"
  52. Fiona Apple: "The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do"
  53. Susie Arioli: "All the Way"
  54. Georg Breinschmid: "Fire"
  55. Hiroe Sekine: "After the Rainfall"
  56. Jamie Ousley: "A Sea of Voices"
  57. Bill Toms: "Memphis"
  58. The SSJ All-Stars: "From California With Love"
  59. Dale Ann Bradley: "Somewhere South of Crazy"
  60. Duda Lucena Quartet: "Live"
  61. Stevie Nicks: "In Your Dreams"
  62. Megan Slankard: "A Token of the Wreckage"
  63. Take 6: "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year"
  64. "Christmas with The Washington Chorus"
  65. Esperanza Spalding: "Chamber Music Society"
  66. John Escreet: "Don't Fight the Inevitable"

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