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Miles Davis – Workin’ With The Miles Davis Quintet (Rudy Van Gelder Remaster) (1959/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 42:24 minutes | 478 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: HDTracks | Artwork: Digital Booklet | © Prestige Records
Recorded: May 11 and October 26 (#7), 1956 at Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ
Remastered: 2006, Rudy Van Gelder at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Workin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet is an album recorded in 1956 by Miles Davis. Two sessions on May 11, 1956 and October 26 in the same year resulted in four albums—this one, Relaxin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet, Steamin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet and Cookin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet. Track 2 is a composition written for Davis by Eddie Vinson (see Blue Haze for more details). “Trane’s Blues” (also known as “Vierd Blues”, a tongue-in-cheek reference to Blue Note founder Francis Wolff’s heavily accented verdict on it), also credited to Davis, is in fact a John Coltrane composition (originally titled “John Paul Jones”, and from an earlier session led by bassist Paul Chambers; before the closing statement of theme, Coltrane and Davis play a bit of Charlie Parker’s “The Hymn”). Paul Chambers plays a cello bassline on “Half Nelson”.
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Miles Davis – The Musings Of Miles (Rudy Van Gelder Remaster) (1955/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 35:52 minutes | 423 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: HDTracks | Artwork: Digital Booklet | © Prestige Records
Recorded: Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, June 7, 1955
Remastered: 2008, Rudy Van Gelder at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
This was a forerunner of the Miles Davis Quintet as it was his first session with Red Garland and Philly Joe Jones. Up to then his Prestige dates had been of the “all star” variety. (Oscar Pettiford fills that bill here.) By the fall, John Coltrane and Paul Chambers would come aboard to help form the first of a continuum of great Davis working groups. On “A Night in Tunisia” Philly Joe used special sticks with little cymbals riveted to the shaft.
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Miles Davis – Steamin’ With The Miles Davis Quintet (Rudy Van Gelder Remaster) (1961/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 40:04 minutes | 409 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: HDTracks | Artwork: Digital Booklet | © Prestige Records
Recorded: May 11 and October 26 (#5), 1956 at Van Gelder Studio in Hackensack, NJ
Remastered: 2007, Rudy Van Gelder at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Of Miles Davis’s many bands, none was more influential and popular than the quintet with John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones. Davis’s muted ballads and medium-tempo standards endeared him to the public. The horns’ searing exposition of classics like “Salt Peanuts” and “Well, You Needn’t” captivated musicians. The searching, restless improvisations of Coltrane intrigued listeners who had a taste for adventure. The flawless rhythm section became a model for bands everywhere.
Steamin’ With The Miles Davis Quintet is, in many respects representative of the total work of the quintet, it affords an excellent opportunity to examine just what this remarkable music was and how it was made. Such chemistry is inexplicable, and so, apparently, is the personality of the man who generated it. (more…)
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Miles Davis – Relaxin’ With The Miles Davis Quintet [Rudy Van Gelder Remaster] (1958/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 36:51 minutes | 414 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: HDTracks | Artwork: Digital Booklet | © Prestige Records
Recorded: May 11 (#5, 6) and October 26 (other selections), 1956 at Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ
Remastered: 2005, Rudy Van Gelder at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Relaxin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet is an album recorded in 1956 by Miles Davis. Two sessions on 11 May 1956 and 26 October in the same year resulted in four albums—this one, Steamin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet, Workin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet and Cookin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet. These four albums are considered to be among the best performances in the whole hard bop subgenre. The album was remastered by Rudy Van Gelder in 2005 for Prestige Records. This album includes dialogue snippets taken from the original master reel. It also emphasizes the Miles Davis’ concentrated ballad-style playing with his medium-register trumpet.
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Miles Davis – Cookin’ With The Miles Davis Quintet (Rudy Van Gelder Remaster) (1957/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 33:25 minutes | 375 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: Q0buz | Artwork: Digital Booklet | © Prestige Records
Recorded: October 26, 1956 at Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ
Remastered: 2007, 2006, Rudy Van Gelder at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Cookin’ With the Miles Davis Quintet is the first of four classic albums that emerged from two marathon and fruitful sessions recorded in 1956 (the other three discs released in Cookin’s wake were Workin’, Relaxin’ and Steamin’). All the albums were recorded live in the studio, as Davis sought to capture, with Rudy Van Gelder’s expert engineering, the sense of a club show · la the Café Bohemia in New York, with his new quintet, featuring tenor saxophonist John Coltrane. In Miles’s own words, he says he called this album Cookin’ because “that’s what we did-came in and cooked.” What’s particularly significant about this Davis album is his first recording of what became a classic tune for him: “My Funny Valentine.” Hot playing is also reserved for the uptempo number “Tune Up,” which revs with the zoom of both the leader and Trane. (more…)
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Miles Davis – Collectors’ Items (Rudy Van Gelder Remaster) (1956/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 43:32 minutes | 429 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: HDTracks | Artwork: Digital Booklet | © Prestige Records
Recorded: January 30, 1953 (#1-4) WOR Studios, New York City and March 16, 1956 (#5-7) at Van Gelder Studio in Hackensack, NJ
Remastered: 2008, Rudy Van Gelder at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Any 1950s Miles Davis recording could easily be called a “collector’s item,” but these selections have special claims to this description. The first four offer Charlie Parker in his only recordings in support of Miles, who had begun his disc career as Bird’s sideman. The last four feature a unique Davis/Mingus encounter. In between is Miles just before launching his first great Quintet, heading two groups loaded with top talent of the “post-bop” period.
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Miles Davis – Bags’ Groove (Rudy Van Gelder Remaster) (1957/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 46:14 minutes | 525 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: Q0buz | Artwork: Digital Booklet | © Prestige Records
Recorded: June 29 & December 24, 1954 at Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, HJ
Remastered: 2007, Rudy Van Gelder at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Bag’s Groove was recorded in 1954 for Prestige Records but was not released until 1957. Most of the album was recorded on June 29, 1954, but the title track was recorded at one session on December 24 of the same year. Several of the tracks on the album were written by Sonny Rollins and would go on to become jazz standards in their own right. (more…)
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Mendelssohn & Bruch – Violin Concertos – Itzhak Perlman, London Symphony Orchestra, Andre Previn (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96kHz | Time – 00:53:58 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: Q0buz | Digital Booklet | © Warner Classics
Recorded: Studio No.1, Abbey Road, London, 27 & 28 November 1972
Itzhak Perlman and André Previn have worked together in the recording studio on many occasions and on a wide-ranging repertoire. The latter has conducted the former in eleven works, their first joint production (Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole and Ravel’s Tzigane for RCA) dating back as far as 1968. All the albums that followed were made for EMI, beginning with this one, which they recorded in 1972. After that, they appeared together in orchestral works by Bartók (see volume 6), Goldmark and Sarasate (volume 17), Sibelius and Sinding (volume 21) and Conus and Korngold (volume 27). In addition, Previn moved to the keyboard to accompany Perlman on a number of rag and jazz albums (volumes 10 and 24) although, unlike Anne-Sophie Mutter and Gil Shaham (on DG), Perlman has never recorded Previn’s own sonatas or concertos.
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Felix Mendelssohn – Songs without Words – Javier Perianes (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96kHz | Time – 01:16:55 minutes | 1,44 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: eClassical | Digital Booklet | © Harmonia Mundi
“If Javier Perianes was setting out to show the full range of Mendelssohn’s genius as a writer for the piano, he has certainly succeeded with this disc…Perianes’s singing right hand moulds the melodies with great affection…[he] has not only impeccable technique but the sharpest of ears for textures and for nuances at the lower end of the dynamic range.” –BBC Music Magazine, Christmas 2014
“There’s nothing small-scale about his conception of this music and, where need be, climaxes are bold…He can charm without trying to, thanks to a haloed sound well caught by Harmonia Mundi’s engineers…There’s great clarity to Perianes’s fugal textures and handled.” –Gramophone Magazine, December 2014
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Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy – Lieder ohne Worte, Books 5-8 – Ronald Brautigam (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96kHz | Time – 01:13:33 minutes | 1,1 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: eClassical | Digital Booklet | © BIS Records
Recorded: August 2014 at Österåker Church, Sweden
Ronald Brautigam, piano During the early 19th century a number of composers began to write in new genres inspired by literature: Chopin’s Ballades, Schumann’s Novelletten and, later, Liszt’s symphonic poems are all examples of this Romantic urge to create works that transcend the divide between the arts. In 1828 Felix Mendelssohn invented a genre of his own, when he presented his sister Fanny with a ‘song without words’ for her birthday. He went on to compose a large number of such Lieder ohne Worte and published no less than six sets of six pieces each. These became immensely popular with amateur and professional pianists, as well as with their respective audiences. Mendelssohn’s death in 1847 did not affect the huge demand for the pieces, and the publisher Simrock soon issued another two sets, compiled from pieces that the composer had set aside for later publication. Mendelssohn himself supplied a few of the songs with more or less descriptive subtitles, but his aim was not to tell an existing story in music instead of words, but rather to communicate something that could only be conveyed through music. To Mendelssohn, music was more exact than language – in his own words: ‘the music I love expresses ideas that are not too vague to be captured in words, but on the contrary too precise.’ When Ronald Brautigam’s recording of Books 1-4 was released in 2012, the reviewer in International Record Review wrote: ‘One could scarcely hope for performances more vivid or poetic than these.’ This second volume includes the last four published sets of Lieder ohne Worte, as well as a number of other piano miniatures. Brautigam performs them on the same instrument as on the previous disc, a copy by Paul McNulty after a piano from 1830 by Ignaz Pleyel, preserved at Musée de la musique in Paris.
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Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy – Lieder ohne Worte, Books 1-4 – Ronald Brautigam (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96kHz | Time – 01:09:19 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: eClassical | Digital Booklet | © BIS Records
Recorded: August 2011 at Österåker Church, Sweden
If claims could be made for a certain composer to have invented a genre single-handedly, Felix Mendelssohn would be a strong candidate with his ‘Songs without Words’. The term itself can be traced back to 1828, and a letter in which Fanny Mendelssohn mention having received a ‘song without words’ as a birthday present from her brother.
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Marvin Gaye – Trouble Man (1972/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/192 kHz | Time – 38:30 minutes | 1,43 GB | Genre: R&B, Soul, Soundtrack
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: HDTracks | Artwork: Front cover | © Universal Motown
Recorded: 1972, Hitsville West, Los Angeles, California
In 1972, things were rapidly shifting in Marvin Gaye’s world. He was coming off of one of his most wide-reaching hit albums with 1971’s instant classic What’s Going On, and his recording contract with Motown subsidiary Tamla was renewed for a cool million dollars and total creative control, making him one of the most successful R&B artists of his day. With Motown’s offices migrating west from Detroit to Los Angeles, Gaye followed suit, beginning work on Trouble Man, both the score to a blaxploitation film of the same name and the soundtrack that would be his next album. With minimal singing (Gaye sings through only the title track, adding fragmentary vocalizations minimally throughout the rest of the album), Gaye wrote, arranged, and conducted the entire soundtrack, working with both Motown players and a full orchestra over the course of its recording. It’s been speculated by some that Trouble Man was a concerted effort to move away from the expectations of a carbon-copy follow-up to the almost immeasurably high standards of What’s Going On, but it’s best to look at the record as an entity unto itself rather than the next Marvin Gaye album in the chain. Though largely absent of his one-of-a-kind vocal presence, the arrangements are richer and more sophisticated than the majority of early blaxploitation fare, with some of the same theatricality and filmic urgency of the best Morricone or David Axelrod soundtracks. With instrumentation more ambitious than even the enormity of What’s Going On, Trouble Man never stays in one place for long. “‘T’ Plays It Cool” paints a hustling cityscape with its solid beat and nervous synthesizer bubbles. Plaintive sax trades verses with rudimentary keyboards and Marvin’s soulful wails on “Life Is a Gamble,” and mournful passages of chamber strings give way to bounding funk grooves. Isaac Hayes’ Shaft soundtrack would become debatably more widely remembered than the movie it scored, and Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly soundtrack had a similar reception. Likewise, Trouble Man the soundtrack album outperformed Trouble Man the movie by leaps and bounds, enjoying Top 20 chart success in its day while the movie sank rapidly into obscurity. Looking at the album outside the trends of its era and inward to the art that Gaye was sculpting shows Trouble Man as a mostly wordless statement on the rapidly changing times for both young black America and Marvin’s personal life. The compositions well over with equal parts tension and detached cool, moving through modes of heartbreaking struggle, searching wonder, and playful street scenes. While it’s been relegated to the lesser status of Gaye’s one-off blaxploitation soundtrack, it rises far above the wandering wah-wah guitars and dated bongos of its peers. Trouble Man might not be as immediate or universally relatable as Gaye’s soul-searching on What’s Going On or his later sensual fixations, but a deep listen will show it’s very much part of the same overarching genius that touched all of his work. ~~ AllMusic Review by Fred Thomas
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Kenny Burrell – Midnight Blue (1963/2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 35:38 minutes | 1,55 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: HDTracks.com | Digital booklet | © Blue Note Records
Recorded: Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, January 8, 1963
Originally released as Blue Note BLP 4123 (mono) and BST 84123 (stereo)
“In preparing these hi def remasters, we were very conscientious about maintaining the feel of the original releases while adding a previously unattainable transparency and depth. It now sounds like you’ve set up your chaise lounge right in the middle of Rudy Van Gelder’s studio!” – Blue Note President, Don Was.
Midnight Blue is Kenny Burrell’s understated masterpiece and one of the finest displays of bluesy-jazz guitar playing. The guitarist whose tone entranced Jimi Hendrix and whose style was emulated by Stevie Ray Vaughan moves deliberately and patiently through this intimate set. Standouts include the smokin’ opener, “Chitlins Con Carne” and the stunning “Soul Lament.” His elegant choice of chords and melodic intensity are powerful and fluid. This star-studded affair also features tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, double-bassist Major Holley Jr., drummer Bill English and conga-player Ray Barretto. In 2005, NPR included the album in its “Basic Jazz Library,” describing the album as “one of the great jazzy blues records.” (more…)
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Kenny Burrell with Coleman Hawkins – Bluesy Burrell (1963/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 39:32 minutes | 425 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: HDTracks.com | Digital booklet | © Prestige Records
Recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, September 14, 1962; #8 – August 15, 1963
Remastered: 2008, Rudy Van Gelder at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Kenny Burrell performs with Coleman Hawkins and his rhythm section. Burrell is in optimum form on all the numbers and in their varied expressions. The leading neo-bop guitarist, he is capable of a far reaching range of expression. His chords can be as lush as, say Johnny Smith’s can, but his lines are always rhythmically spirited by a very powerful jazz energy and blues-in-formed charge that I think no contemporary guitarist can equal.
“… (Hawkins) clearly enjoys playing with Burrell, as much as you’ll enjoy playing the record.””
—All About Jazz
Features the BONUS TRACK “I Never Knew.” (more…)
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Karol Beffa – Into the dark – Karol Beffa, Karine Deshayes, Arnaud Thorette, Emmanuel Ceysson, Ensemble Contraste, Johan Farjot (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:13:05 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: Q0buz | Digital booklet | © Aparté
Recorded: 31 janvier, 1er février et 14 février 2013 au Temple Saint Marcel, Paris
The music of contemporary French composer Karol Beffa takes us through the mirror into a dream world that is at once strange and intimately familiar. It invites us to explore inner harmony and rhythm. This new recording includes ‘Into the Dark’, ‘Rainbow’, ‘Dédales’ for piano and string orchestra and ‘Nuit obscure’ for string orchestra and voice. Gorgeously executed by Ensemble Contraste under the direction of Johan Farjot, this recording features mezzo-soprano Karine Deshayes, harpist Emmanuel Ceysson, violist Arnaud Thorette and the composer on piano. Pianist and improviser, Karol Beffa is a composer whose works have been performed in France Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Russia, the United States and Japan by such well-known ensembles as A Sei Voci, Maîtrise de Radio France, Cambridge Voices, and the leading orchestras (Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre National de l’Opéra de Lyon, Saint Petersburg Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen…). As composer-in-residence of the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse (2006-09), Karol Beffa wrote Paradis artificiels (2007), a Violin Concerto, premiered by Renaud Capuçon (2008), and a Piano Concerto, first performed by Boris Berezovsky (2009). In addition, he has composed two incidental scores as well as the music for 15 films.
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