Jazz CDs

Why another reissue of Kind of Blue? More than a milestone in jazz, Kind of Blue is a defining moment of 20th-century music, one of those incredibly rare works of art that achieve equal popularity among musicians, critics and the public at large. The rest of us might tend to agree with Jimmy...

One of the most important jazz musicians of all time, John Coltrane ranks at the top in significance, influence and musicianship with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. As a tenor-saxophonist, Coltrane originally developed his sound out of the...

Horace Silver always had a simple and earthy approach. One of the leaders of hard bop and soul jazz, Silver's funky style of piano was blues-oriented with strong hints of church music, leavened by his witty quotes from other songs. In addition, Silver has long been a major composer, with...

Cannonball Adderley was one of the finest alto-saxophonists in jazz history, and one of the most beloved of all jazz musicians. He and his brother cornetist Nat Adderley had originally planned to spend their careers as schoolteachers in Florida but then fate intervened. In the summer of 1955,...

Back in 1917, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB) was the first jazz group to ever record. Their version of Livery Stable Blues, which featured the three horns imitating barnyard animals, was a major hit and unofficially launched the jazz age. The ensemble-oriented band (comprised originally...

Count Basie was born August 21, 1904. To celebrate his centennial, this exciting four-CD set has been issued. Basie's sparse and percussive approach on the piano (stripping stride piano down to its bare essentials) helped to realign the function of the instruments in the rhythm section in...

It is 1954. Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie is at the top of his game. The legendary composer-musician-bandleader continues his historic mucial journey with Afro, fusing jazz with Afro-Cuban sounds to create Afro-Cuban jazz. Dizzy is dazzling on trumpet and flute, with a young Quincy Jones on trumpet,...

As Dave Brubeck writes in his liner notes for this CD reissue, "Creating a 'hit' out of the odd-meter experiments of Time Out was the farthest from any of our minds in 1959 when Paul Desmond, Joe Morello, Eugene Wright and I went into the studio to record." This is often the...

One of the major jazz pianists of the past 40 years, Keith Jarrett has had a wide-ranging and very productive career. Jarrett, who began playing piano when he was three and was considered a child prodigy, was a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (1965), the very popular Charles Lloyd...

On January 16, 1938, Benny Goodman and his orchestra had the first full-length jazz concert at the Mecca of classical music, Carnegie Hall. The King of Swing was at the height of his powers and his orchestra (which included trumpeters Harry James and Ziggy Elman, pianist Jess Stacy and drummer...

Art Blakey, an explosive drummer, originally came to fame during the classic bebop era, playing with Billy Eckstine's innovative bebop big band of 1944-46. In the late 1940s, he briefly led the Seventeen Messengers and freelanced. In 1954, he and pianist Horace Silver formed and co-led the...

Marin Alsop, who was recently named Gramophone Magazine's Artist of the Year, is one of the most imaginative conductors on the music scene today. She has the wonderful ability to discover and explore new or forgotten areas of the repertoire, and that is exactly what she has done in...