Recording News

Ray Lamontagne: New Album in August

Source: JamBase
June 8, 2010

SUMMER TOUR WITH DAVID GRAY

Ray LaMontagne Ray LaMontagne is set to release his new album, Ray LaMontagne & The Pariah Dogs - God Willin' & The Creek Don't Rise on August 17th, 2010 on RCA Records. This is his fourth studio record, and the follow-up to his heralded Gossip in the Grain (see the JamBase interview with LaMontagne about this release here).

Entirely self produced (for the first time) God Willin' & the Creek Don't Rise was recorded in ...

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For Hard Core Audiophiles

Source: Groove Notes
June 8, 2010

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The ECM Old Masters Series

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
June 10, 2010

Manfred Eicher's ECM label, still celebrating the 40th anniversary it observed late last year, has reissued some of its landmark recordings. Many of them are on CD for the first time. Over the decades, ECM has achieved nearly infallible sound reproduction of a broad and eclectic range of musicians including such disparate label mates as Arvo Prt, Andres Schiff, Keith Jarrett, John Cage, Kim Kashkashian, Iva Bittov, Johann Sebastian Bach and the Art Ensemble of Chicago.

The label evolved with ...

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Backatown by Trombone Shorty

Source: Lubricity
June 5, 2010

Backatown, the latest release from New Orleans brass prodigy Trombone Shorty (aka Troy Andrews,) takes the explosive musical milieu of New Orleans to a new level, bringing New Orleans jazz, funk and whatever else goes on down there into a sound he calls “supaphunkrock." The result is an intensely funky party album that manages to be both immensely entertaining and musically fascinating.

If the tracks on this record don't make your body move, there's something seriously wrong with you. The ...

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Oberg/ Thewes/ Griener - Lacy Pool (Hatology)

Source: Master of a Small House
June 5, 2010

One measure of a composition's longevity is its relative receptiveness to reinterpretation. Steve Lacy's songbook was largely neglected during his lifetime, but the dearth of interpreters was more a function of a paucity of transcriptions than any reflection on rigidity or recalcitrance in his tunes. The German trio Lacy Pool proves conclusively the malleable properties of their namesake's folio on this live set taped at Loft in Cologne. The band name has a delicious double meaning encompassing the kinetic geometries ...

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Jazzwax List: With Voices

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
June 5, 2010

Adding a vocal choir behind a jazz instrumentalist probably dates back to May 25, 1953, when Charlie Parker was teamed with the Dave Lambert Singers for a Clef recording session (see my two-part post here). A failed experiment (there were simply too many voices), the concept began to catch on again in the late 1950s and beyond as influences from the church and civil rights movement merged with jazz and soul. By then, the choir sound was less vocalese and ...

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Composer/Bandleader Roland Vazquez Proudly Announces the Release of Roland Vazquez Band: The Visitor

Source: Jason Byrne, Red Cat Publicity
June 5, 2010

Composer/Bandleader Roland Vazquez Proudly Announces The Release of Roland Vazquez Band: The Visitor

The Visitor is Vazquez' tenth album as composer/leader, his first studio recording in thirteen years, & a 19-piece all-star Afro Latin “big band" project made possible thru a grant from The Aaron Copland Fund For Music.

The Roland Vazquez Band featuring:

Aaron Heick, Joel Frahm, Dan Willis, Roger Rosenberg, Tony Kadleck, Alex NorrisLuis Perdomo (piano), James Genus (bass), Ignacio Berroa (drums)Samuel Torres (congas & percussion), Pete McCann ...

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Manny Albam: The Drum Suite

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
June 3, 2010

One of the most swinging and inventive arrangers of the 1950s was Manny Albam. In addition to being a gifted writer, he had a knack for attracting the most superb big band musicians of the period to his recording sessions. Like Ernie Wilkins and Al Cohn, Albam could create charts that were packed with sudden excitement and loads of swinging wallop and twists and turns. As Johnny Mandel said to me recently, “Manny didn't know how to be dull."

Of ...

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