Here’s a project that was definitely done with the audiophile in mind; one of Frank Sinatra’s best records, remastered and pressed onto 180-gram vinyl by a company that specializes in such productions. This 1962 outing ...

Okay, in 1975 I’m just another white kid living in L.A. listening to one mellowed out, guitar strumming singer-songwriter after another and still mourning the break-up of the Beatles. But I was also a Top ...

Best known as Wilco’s lead guitarist and an avant-garde improviser, Nels Cline scores a major triumph as composer and arranger with this two-CD musical interpretation of paintings by Los Angeles artist Ed Ruscha. Producer/poet David ...

This box celebrates one of the best, and most seriously underrated, musical partnerships of the postmodern era. Both John Carter and Bobby Bradford were Texans who relocated to Los Angeles, and both worked early on ...

When Ella Fitzgerald joined Verve Records in 1955, the 38-year-old singer was best known for a single hit (“A-Tisket, A-Tasket”), her bop-inspired scat singing, and a stack of mostly forgettable recordings. Her manager (and Verve-founder) ...

Henry Threadgill hasn’t fomented the kind of jazz revolution that Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, or Ornette Coleman did. Nor is he regarded as the fountainhead of a movement like pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, the founding ...

Just as the previous generation of jazz critics fell in love with Sarah Vaughan, I was smitten by Cassandra Wilson twelve bars into the opening track of her 1993 Blue Note debut, Blue Light Til ...

His remarkably facile fingerstyle-and-thumb six-string approach caused Eubanks to be touted in the early 80s as “the next Wes Mongtomery.” Several impressive albums over the next two decades showed promise, notably 1982’s The Guitarist and ...

Garrison Fewell is a veteran guitarist who’s worked in the Boston area for decades. He comes out of a standard modern jazz guitar approach, but his work with the Variable Density Sound Orchestra shows just ...

Except for a few unobtrusive overdubs, Silent Movies is a solo jazz guitar record that casts a quiet but powerful spell. The tempos are slow, the playing sparse, the mood somber. The “compulsory distortion, rude ...

1. Dave Brubeck Quartet: Time Further Out. (Issue 209) 2. Andrew Hill: Point of Departure. (Issue 213) 3. Illinois Jacquet: Swing’s The Thing. (Issue 213) 4. Ben Webster: The Soul of Ben Webster. (Issue 216) ...

One response to the increasingly difficult problem of marketing recorded music is the production of high-quality LPs in limited-run sets that specifically target collectors. Some of the best jazz coming out today falls into this ...

Bassist-composer-arranger-producer Marcus Miller reveals the full scope of his talents on this live outing recorded in 2008 on the French Riviera. Joined by the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic, turntablist DJ Logic, singer Raul Midon, and trumpeter Roy ...

Bird Songs, Lovano’s 22nd recording for Blue Note, is his paean to bebop icon Charlie Parker. But it’s also a tribute to the sax greats who influenced Bird, like Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, as ...

Two years after the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s ground- and time-signature breaking Time Out (1959), this classic quartet (Brubeck, piano, Paul Desmond, alto sax, Eugene Wright, bass, and Joe Morello, drums) would continue its jazz experiments ...