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Ivan Lins: My Heart Speaks
by Edward Blanco
Brazilian singer and composer Ivan Lins has recorded about fifty albums since 1970 but has not recorded one in over ten years. Now, this multiple Latin Grammy-Award winner remerges with the superb and inviting My Heart Speaks, perhaps the most impressive and lush recording of his long, distinguished career. An important feature here is the extraordinary collaboration with the 91-piece Tblisi Symphony Orchestra, the most popular orchestra from the Republic of Georgia in Eastern Europe, under the direction of Maestro ...
read moreIvan Lins: My Heart Speaks
by Pierre Giroux
Ivan Lins is a Brazilian music legend and multiple Latin Grammy Award winner who has consistently delivered a unique blend of bossa nova, jazz and pop throughout his career. In this first release in over ten years, entitled My Heart Speaks, Lins performs rare gems from his catalogue backed by the Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra along with guest appearances from vocalists Dianne Reeves, Jane Monheit and newcomer Tawanda, as well as trumpeter Randy Brecker. The eleven songs ...
read moreIvan Lins: My Heart Speaks
by Katchie Cartwright
My Heart Speaks opens with Renata Maria," the song of a ravishing woman who emerges from the sea then disappears, leaving her would-be lover to yearn eternally. Ivan Lins composed the piece in 2004 with Chico Buarque in mind (punningly calling it a Buarquiana brasileira"). Buarque invented the narrative later, presenting his lyric to Lins as a gift, upon the birth of his first grandchild. Kuno Schmid's score sets the scene. Warm orchestral waves wash over Lins' impassioned ...
read moreChristian Howes & Richard Galliano: Southern Exposure
by Howard Mandel
Christian Howes wants you to know that Southern Exposure is not simply another violin and accordion record, some light-hearted evocation of Parisian café music. It's deeper than that," Howes, the 40-year-old violinist who is also an educator and online entrepreneur, says of his 13th album (counting self-produced projects from the 1990s). I think there's a lot of passion on the record. There's a sort of tragic feel to some of it. It's distinguished by the fact ...
read moreCharles Mingus: The Lost Album from Ronnie Scott's
by Ken Dryden
Charles Mingus was larger than life as a composer, performer and bandleader. A writer of frequently difficult music, Mingus was demanding of himself and his musicians, yet he never wanted his works to sound overly polished. These recordings made over two consecutive nights at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in jny: London in 1971 were recorded to be released on Columbia Records. Unfortunately, the gross incompetence of the label's president, Clive Davis, who dropped the entire jazz roster in 1973, except ...
read moreCharles Mingus: The Lost Album from Ronnie Scott's
by Mike Jurkovic
After the emotional and economic bankruptcies of the late 1960s that nearly took him out of the picture entirely, 1972 broke well for Charles Mingus. He had re-signed with Columbia and delivered the revered Let My Children Hear Music. (He would, a year later, be part of the great Clive Davis jazz purge of 1973 which included Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, and, some argue Ornette Coleman.) Grants and commissions were coming in and his music, in all its bold, gnarly, ...
read moreCharles Mingus: The Lost Album from Ronnie Scott's
by Mark Corroto
Professionally recorded for Columbia Records, but never released, this live concert from London's Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club is seeing the light of day some fifty years later, as well as marking the centennial celebration of Charles Mingus' birth. The music was never released, not because it was unworthy (it is indeed worthy), but because Mingus along with Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Keith Jarrett and Ornette Coleman were let go by the label's chief, Clive Davis. Only Miles Davis survived the ...
read moreBill Evans: Inner Spirit
by Jim Worsley
Tension-filled Buenos Aires seemed to bring the best out of Bill Evans. This 1979 live performance at the Teatro General San Martin is as energized as the Argentinian city was polarized. Six years earlier, Evans had played the city in trio with bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Marty Morell, amidst dangerous political terror. The trio was immune to the chaos and was treated with respect, if not jubilation, at the prospect of hearing them perform. That performance, captured on Morning ...
read moreBill Evans: Morning Glory
by Jim Worsley
1973 was a time of political volatility and unrest. Argentina's former President Juan Peron was returning to the country after many years in exile. The controversy brought emotions to the surface and created a dangerous environment. Just what three jazz cats didn't need to hear as they made their way to Buenos Aires for a concert. There is an unwritten code of understanding, however, that musicians and athletes are to walk freely. They are artists after all, often considered above ...
read moreRoy Hargrove / Mulgrew Miller: In Harmony
by Pierre Giroux
In ballet, a pas de deux" is a dance or figure for two performers. In jazz, the concept of two musicians playing together called a duo, has been a fairly familiar concept and undertake by the likes of Stan Getz and Kenny Barron, Chick Corea and Gary Burton as well as pianist Bill Evans and Tony Bennett. Trumpeter Roy Hargrove and pianist Mulgrew Miller have now added their names to this construct with the issuance of ...
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