HERBIE HANCOCK (Columbia Legacy Jazz)
Expanded editions of two significant Hancock albums from the late '70s. Never released in the U.S., The Piano is a rare solo piano recording, and the 2-CD collection VSOP: Live Under The Sky captures the amazing 1979 reunion of the superstar VSOP acoustic quintet that featured 4/5 of the Davis quintet: Hancock, Shorter, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams: with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. The two live-in-concert sets were recorded at Denon Colosseum in Tokyo.
September 28
MILES DAVIS - Seven Steps: The Complete Columbia Recordings of Miles Davis, 1963-1964 (Columbia Legacy Jazz)
In March 1963, Miles Davis was, for the first time in years, without a band. Eighteen months later, in September 1964, he had perhaps the finest small group in the world. This 7-CD box set chronicles the quintets led by the trumpeter-bandleader during that crucial year-and-a-half period. Presenting forty-seven selections (seven of which are previously unissued, with three more heard for the first time in unedited form), Davis and his colleagues create the style that came to be known as “freebop." Co-produced by Bob Belden and Michael Cuscuna, and with new liner notes by Bob Blumenthal, the “Seven Steps" box set is an invaluable addition to one of the 20th century's definitive musical statements.
October 12
TONY BENNETT - Fifty Years: The Artistry of Tony Bennett (RPM/Columbia)
The recording talent of Tony Bennett has been on display for virtually a half-century at Columbia Records, the longest track record that any living, charting popular music artist can claim. More than a dozen years ago, the first 40 years of his remarkable career were revisited on a collection that has now been updated for a new generation. Adding a decade on to its original title, Fifty Years: The Artistry of Tony Bennett is a 5-CD set which will feature 110 songs. The newly-compiled fifth disc covers 1992-2002 with 22 tracks. Every step of the box's evolution was overseen by Bennett, and he provides a track-by-track reflection for all 110 selections.
November 16
WAYNE SHORTER - Footprints: The Life And Music of Wayne Shorter (Columbia Legacy Jazz)
The 22 selections featured on the 2-CD Footprints: The Life and Music of Wayne Shorter represent one of the most important and influential musical careers of the past four-plus decades: that of Wayne Shorter. Spanning the years 1959 (when he was Music Director for Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers) to 2001, Footprints presents the tenor and soprano saxophonist and composer-arranger in a fascinating variety of settings, originally recorded for several labels. We hear Shorter as key sideman (with Blakey and, from 1964-1970, Miles Davis, for whom he wrote some of his most perdurable compositions), first-call studio musician (behind Steely Dan, whose “Aja" was highlighted by his twisting, robust tenor solo) and Joni Mitchell, featured jazz soloist (with Gil Evans, J.J. Johnson, and Brazilian icon, Milton Nascimento), Grammy-winning duo partner with former Miles Davis cohort Herbie Hancock, co-leader (with the keyboardist-composer Joe Zawinul of Weather Report, the breakthrough fusion band they founded in 1970) and, of course, leader on a series of his own sparkling albums, dating back to the mid-1960s.
For more information contact All About Jazz.
