Sunday Music Muse Day - Gary Burton and Friends, Sting, Bill Nelson.

For this week's Sunday Music Muse Day, I present one new CD purchase, and several vinyl selections from my record collection.  The CD is Gary Burton, Like Mind.  Joining the legendary vibraphonist is Chick Corea, on piano, Pat Metheny, on guitar, Roy Haynes, on drums, and Dave Holland, on bass. This 1998 session, won a 1999 Grammy award for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Individual or Group.  That should have a no-brainer the selection committee considering the musicians on this CD.  Gary Burton's liner notes are very interesting as he relates how the various members, met and criss-crossed each others career.  The most surprising note, for me, was that this session was the first time Chick Corea and Pat Metheny played together.  The other item of note was how highly Burton  regarded the writing skills for Corea and Metheny.  He wrote, "Chick and Pat are two of the most enduring and prolific jazz composers around."  The resulting CD bears this out.

 

My two next selections are the result of conversation with Facebooks friends. This week marked 35th anniversary of the Police Zenyatta Mondatta album. I posted, "the Police was one of the last popular Rock groups I followed. Also I enjoyed each member's individual projects after they broke up."   So, I checked out some Sting videos of his solo tour, so that made me pull out vinyl of the Sting Bring Out the Night live double album set.  Great music with Sting, plus Branford Marsalis, on saxophone, Omar Hakim, on drums,  Darryl Jones on bass, and Kenny Kirkland, on keyboards.  These are all young turks of jazz who have played with jazz legends like Dizzie Gillespie, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Weather Report, and others.  One of the nice aspects pulling out the vinyl is the large cover art, which this set has many of, by artist Donna Muir and Su Huntley. Very nice.

The last selection was also the result of another Facebook exchange.  A FB friend asked about the rock group Be Bop Deluxe.  I recognized the cover, but remember I have a LP and CD by the guitarist of the group, Bill Nelson.  So, that led to me pulling those items and giving them a listen.

It nice to have any reason to dig out some old music.  I'll have to do it more often.  Enjoy.

Sunday Music Muse Day - Bill Frisell, Pat Metheny, Freddie Hubbard and Patricia Barber.

I missed posting last week, due to family stuff, so I'm back with this week's Sunday Music Muse Day with four solid selections.  First up, a favorite guitarist of mine, Bill Frisell Big Sur, with another eclectic and adventurous outing.  Big Sur finds Bill playing with a drummer and a viola, cello, and violin  string trio.  The title comes from the music being written at Glen Deven Ranch in Big Sur, a legendary region in California Big who's relative isolation and natural beauty began to attract writers and artists, and performed at the 2012 Monterey Jazz Festival.

Next up is another, favorite, Pat Metheny The Way Up, which find Pat teamed with long time musical band mates Lyle Mays, on piano and keyboards, and Steve Rodby, on acoustic and electric bass.  The CD consist of one long 68 minute composition.  A very engrossing music.

Here's another Rudy Van Gelder Edition CD which he transferred and remastered a classic Blue Note album with 24-bit technology, Freddie Hubbard Hud-Tones. Again, a chance to fill my hole in my collection is a classic Blue Note reissue.  An interesting personal note, in a sort of a "six degrees of separation", when I was in Paris when my father was sick, I stayed at the home of the sister of the bassist Reggie Workman.  Small world.

Last but not least in a female pianist and singer Patricia Barber, the Cole Porter Mix CD.  I like to think of Patricia as my personal "Diana Krall" in that I like her rendering of standards and her own originals.

Until next week, enjoy.