Recording News

England-based Katie Elliott performs bucolic and evocative piano jazz on latest release

Source: Lauren Rogers
December 14, 2011

Piano jazz rarely gets as bucolic and evocative as Walking the Edge, the latest album from Gloucestershire, England-based artist Katie Elliott. Of course, much of it is rooted in Elliott's British homeland. Her compositions seem to illustrate the environment around her, the rural area of Gloucestershire. Its inspiration is keenly felt in her music, most of it brimming with hauntingly lush melodies.

Oddly enough, Elliott began her professional music career writing children's music books for Usborne Publishing and Boosey & ...

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Singer Amy Cervini Pays Homage to Hip Jazz Pixie Blossom Dearie with "Digging Me, Digging You"

Source: Jason Byrne, Red Cat Publicity
December 14, 2011

The album—to be released on January 31, 2012 by Anzic Records—presents Cervini's fresh take on vintage originals and standards associated with Dearie, backed by an all-star New York jazz combo CD Release Celebrations: March 6 & 7, 7-9 PM—The 55 Bar, NYC Featuring Amy Cervini—voice, Anat Cohen—clarinet, TBD—trumpet, Jesse Lewis—guitar, Matt Aronoff—bass, Matt Wilson—drums Canadian Tour! Featuring Amy Cervini with Adrean Farrugia—piano, Ross MacIntyre—bass & Ernesto Cervini—drums March 16th—The Jazz Room, Waterloo, Ontario March 20th—National Arts Centre, Fourth Stage, Ottawa, ...

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Tim Ries Quintet - Live at Smalls (Smalls Live, 2011)

Source: Music and More by Tim Niland
December 13, 2011

Tim Ries is most well known for playing saxophone with the Rolling Stones, but as this live set from the New York City jazz club Smalls shows, he's an accomplished jazz musician as well. On this album he plays soprano and saxophone joined by Chris Potter on tenor saxophone, Kalman Olah on piano and Billy Drummond on drums. “Last Kabbalist of Lisbon" opens with a bass solo, with the band slowly building in and ramping up the pace. Ries builds ...

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Box Sets for the Holidays

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
December 13, 2011

Looking back, we're likely to view 2012 as the year of the box set. Almost weekly over the past 12 months, boxes of CDs were released documenting a year in an artist's life, a classic album with all of the outtakes, or everything the artist ever recorded. This year Sony even unveiled PopMarket.com, which features the complete recordings of artists for specific Sony-owed labels, like Columbia. Personally, I love box sets. I love the heft, I love loading the albums into ...

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'The Concert Sinatra' Applies State-of-Art Technology

Source: Costa Communications
December 13, 2011

Remixed recording recaptures Sinatra's timeless voice in a set of classic Broadway tunes arranged by Nelson Riddle. Release date: January 17, 2012 LOS ANGELES, Calif.—Concord Records has seamlessly taken existing multi-channel recordings from the early 1960s and applied state-of-the-art, 21st-century digital technology for the reissue of The Concert Sinatra, one of the most technically ambitious and musically innovative recordings of Frank Sinatra's career. Under license from Frank Sinatra Enterprises (FSE), the album is set for release on January 17, 2012. ...

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King Crimson - The Power to Believe (2003)

Source: Something Else!
December 12, 2011

The problem any incarnation of this band has faced is getting King Crimson's music heard by more than its legion of die-hard fans. The appeal of the music is more in the power of the mathematical precision with which Crimson's members undertake each piece, and as such, is generally geared toward people who prefer to “listen" to music—as opposed to those who “like to rock." For all the effort the band puts in “rocking out," the result is nearly always ...

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Tony Bennett - The Classic Christmas Album (2011)

Source: Something Else!
December 12, 2011

Tony Bennett's warm, inviting delivery would seem perfectly suited to seasonal music—and it is. You can hear the very best of his Christmas projects, from a seminal 1968 Yuletide release to this burst of holly-jolly projects in the 2000s, on this terrific new compilation. Classic features five tracks from '68's Snowfall: The Tony Bennett Christmas Album, arranged and conducted with a sensitive joy by Robert Farnon—a frequent collaborator with Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Williams, among others. That might ...

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Urbie Green: A Cool Yuletide

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
December 12, 2011

It's that time of year again when I pick my favorite classic jazz holiday album. I always try to select obscure albums you may have overlooked, forgotten about or weren't even aware existed. This year, the winner is trombonist Urbie Green's A Cool Yuletide, recorded for RCA's “X" label in 1954. Originally a 10-inch disc, the album features Joe Wilder (tp),Urbie Green (tb), Al Cohn (ts), Al Epstein (bar) [who's listed as “Al Young"], Buddy Weed (p), Mundell Lowe (g), ...

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