Recording of the Month

Written by: Rad Bennett

Category: Recording of the Month

Created: 01 February 2012

Verve/Analogue Productions CVRJ8545 SA
Format: Stereo SACD/CD

Musical Performance: ****1/2
Sound Quality: ****
Overall Enjoyment: ****1/2

In the early 1960s, after tenor saxophonist Stan Getz heard Brazilian jazz played with a new beat called bossa nova (Portuguese for “new trend”), he and guitarist Charlie Byrd collaborated on the album Jazz Samba (1962). Having gotten a taste of bossa nova in the soundtrack of the mesmerizing Brazilian film Black Orpheus (1959), US listeners and musicians were primed for something new and innovative, and Jazz Samba was one of those rare jazz albums that topped the pop charts.

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Written by: Joseph Taylor

Category: Recording of the Month

Created: 01 January 2012

Concord Jazz CJA-33364-02
Format: CD

Musical Performance: ****½
Sound Quality: ****
Overall Enjoyment: ****

Chick Corea’s Further Explorations echoes the title of Bill Evans’s Explorations, his 1961 recording with Paul Motian and Scott LaFaro for Riverside Records. Motian, who died late last year, is on hand for this live recording with Corea and bassist Eddie Gomez, who played with Evans for 11 years. The trio worked together to choose material from Evans’s discography for a series of live performances at New York’s Blue Note in May 2010. In September 2011, Universal Music in Japan released this two-disc set of selections from those performances, and Concord has now made it available in the US.

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