THE JAZZ CHILL CORNER MILES DAVIS - THE ORIGINAL MONO RECORDINGS, A COLLECTION OF NINE ALBUMS SET FOR RELEASE ON NOVEMBER 12, 2013

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1. MILES DAVIS - THE ORIGINAL MONO RECORDINGS, A COLLECTION OF NINE ALBUMS SET FOR RELEASE ON NOVEMBER 12, 2013
2. NEW RELEASES - STEVE GADD BAND, JANIS SIEGEL, PATRICK YANDALL
3. GHOST TRAIN ORCHESTRA - BOOK OF RHAPSODIES

MILES DAVIS - THE ORIGINAL MONO RECORDINGS, A COLLECTION OF NINE ALBUMS SET FOR RELEASE ON NOVEMBER 12, 2013 Posted: 04 Sep 2013 08:39 AM PDT Nine of Miles Davis' earliest albums on Columbia Records, encompassing music that he recorded for the label in monaural sound from 1956 to 1961 (and released from 1957 to 1964), will be issued together on CD for the first time as Miles Davis: The Original Mono Recordings.   This box set, comprising nine CDs in mini-LP replica jackets, will be available everywhere November 12, 2013. On November 29th in celebration of Record Store Day, Columbia/Legacy will follow up with vinyl mono editions of Kind Of Blue, Miles & Monk At Newport, and Jazz Track—capping a series of recently released mono LPs including 'Round About Midnight, Miles Ahead, Milestones, Porgy and Bess, Sketches of Spain, and Someday My Prince Will Come. Miles Davis: The Original Mono Recordings is a true landmark collection, with every album newly remastered in 2012-13, from the original analog master tapes.  CD consumers will be able to hear Miles' early music in mono, the way virtually all popular music was recorded, marketed and intended to be heard in the 1950s and early 1960s.  Mono was the norm before the home, broadcast and film stereo era began to develop fully in the mid-'60s, leading to stereo's all-encompassing takeover by the early '70s. The Original Mono Recordings by Miles Davis includes: •The six albums that trace the development of Miles' "first great quintet" at Columbia, all notably featuring John Coltrane, namely 'Round About Midnight, Milestones, Jazz Track, Kind Of Blue (at 4-times RIAA platinum, the greatest selling jazz album of all time), Someday My Prince Will Come, and Miles And Monk At Newport; and •The three albums that placed Miles (and various group members) in sophisticated orchestral settings at Columbia, all notably arranged and conducted by Gil Evans, namely Miles Ahead, Porgy And Bess, and Sketches Of Spain. Two of the albums included in The Original Mono Recordings are exciting rare editions that have never appeared in any Miles Davis CD collection in the U.S., and have not been generally available for many years: •Jazz Track, presenting 10 improvised tracks that Miles recorded in Paris with European musicians in 1957, for director Louis Malle's film Ascenseur pour l'echafaud (Elevator To the Gallows), combined with three tracks by Miles' own sextet in New York—featuring Davis, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb—from their only other studio recordings of 1958, prior to the Kind Of Blue sessions in '59; and •Miles And Monk At Newport, featuring four jazz classics recorded live by the Miles Davis Sextet at the jazz festival in 1958, followed by two classics recorded at the festival in 1963 by Columbia's newly-signed Thelonious Monk Quartet. The Original Mono Recordings will be housed in a slipcase similar to Bob Dylan's The Original Mono Recordings box released in 2012.  The new box will contain a fully-annotated 40-page booklet with complete discographic information including personnel and production details, plus a 2,000-word essay by author and Wall Street Journal writer Marc Myers.  The liner notes add in-depth, album-by-album comments on the new remastering processes, as told to Myers by three-time Grammy Award®-winning mastering engineer Mark Wilder. Over the course of these nine albums, whose principal recording spanned barely a half decade (from June 1956 to March 1961), The Original Mono Recordings presents a clear vision of Miles' evolution as musician and bandleader, and as a composer graduating from hardbop to modal creations.  He was famously signed to Columbia Records by George Avakian in the summer of 1955, after the A&R staff producer witnessed Miles' showstopping solo on a jam session of "'Round Midnight" at the Newport Jazz Festival.  Jazz critics acclaimed the performance as the "return of Miles," who was considered a difficult artist to work with, who did not even have a regular working group at the time. Taking Avakian seriously, Miles assembled a group around bassist Paul Chambers and drummer "Philly" Joe Jones, with Red Garland on piano and, after several early contenders (Sonny Rollins, Hank Mobley), Philadelphian John Coltrane on tenor saxophone.  This lineup cut four LPs' worth of material in late '55 and '56 to satisfy Miles' contractual obligations to Prestige Records.  They also began to record the first Columbia LP, 'Round About Midnight, named for the paraphrased Monk title tune.  The LP, produced by Avakian, consisted of jazz and popular standards done in Miles' inimitable style. Most significantly, in terms of The Original Mono Recordings, Myers writes, "the word 'mono' did not appear on the cover.  Instead, the jacket announced that the music inside was '360º Sound, Guaranteed High Fidelity.'  Stereo technology wouldn't be in place at Columbia until 1958, so there was no need to add the word 'mono' to delineate a difference. 'Mono has always been truer to the studio sound and the original intent,' said Avakian.  'Mono featured less audio trickery and fewer audio distractions, so you can actually hear the musical conversation between Miles and the other musicians as it occurred in the studio.'" For the second album, Avakian realized his intention to feature Miles in the presence of a jazz orchestra: horns, trumpets, trombones, bass trombone, tuba, alto sax, bass clarinet, flutes, and clarinets, along with bassist Chambers and drummer Art Taylor.  Most significantly, Miles Ahead by Miles Davis + 19 reunited Miles with his late-1940s Birth of the Cool collaborator, arranger Gil Evans.  With the exception of the title track, composed by Miles and Evans, the program again consisted of jazz and popular standards done Miles' way. Although the third album, Milestones, was recorded in two productive days of sessions in February and March 1958, it proved to be Avakian's final LP with Miles.  It reintroduced the quintet (Coltrane, Garland, Chambers, Jones) along with a new member from Florida, former schoolteacher Julian "Cannonball" Adderley on alto sax.  Some of Miles' most iconic music is heard on Milestones: the quintet (sextet's) versions of Jackie McLean's "Dr. Jekyll," Dizzy Gillespie's "Two Bass Hit," and Monk's closing "Straight, No Chaser."  At the same time, the album upped the ante of Miles' originals with two, "Miles" and the 13-minute "Sid's Ahead," which hinted at things to come from the inspired young (32-year old) artist. Two months after the Milestones sessions, the quintet (sextet) was back in the studio for a day of recording with a new Columbia staff producer, Cal Lampley.  The session yielded four classics, three of which, due to length, made Side B of Jazz Track: Miles' original "Fran-Dance," and two American Songbook standards, "On Green Dolphin Street" and "Stella by Starlight." (The fourth, "Love for Sale," running over 11 minutes, is included on Columbia/Legacy's Kind Of Blue 50th Anniversary sets.)  The year before (December 1957), Miles had temporarily disbanded his group and gone to Paris to perform.  There he was hired to create a soundtrack for French film director Louis Malle's suspenseful murder mystery Ascenseur pour l'echafaud (Elevator To the Gallows in the U.S.).  Miles and several European jazz musicians improvised the music while seeing the film on a screen.  The music, barely 25 minutes, was issued on LP in France in 1958, and was subsequently coupled with the three Lampley tracks on Columbia as the cleverly titled Jazz Track, one of Miles' most elusive and collectible LPs. In between, Miles got back together with Gil Evans in July and August 1958, for the jazz orchestral masterpiece, the Gershwins' Porgy And Bess, the final LP with Lampley.  The scene was then set for the March-April 1959 Kind Of Blue sessions, with Columbia's Irving Townsend historically attributed as having overseen the recording, with a slightly revamped quintet (sextet) lineup, as Jones was replaced by Jimmy Cobb on drums, and Garland was replaced on piano by Bill Evans (on "So What," "Blue In Green," "All Blues," and "Flamenco Sketches") and by Wynton Kelly ("Freddie Freeloader").  The impact of Kind Of Blue, not only on jazz but on popular (even classical) music in general, continues to reverberate.  It is part of the Library Of Congress National Recording Registry, it is #12 on the Rolling Stone list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and it was even honored by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2009, the album's 50th anniversary. Kind Of Blue's closing track, "Flamenco Sketches," might have hinted at the next project, the jazz orchestral Latin-tinged modal masterwork, Sketches Of Spain, the third of Miles' collaborations with Gil Evans.  Under Columbia's staff producer Teo Macero (who would remain Miles' exclusive producer at Columbia through the 1980s), two standards of the Spanish national repertoire, Rodrigo's "Concierto de Aranjuez" and de Falla's Will o' the Wisp (from "El amor brujo") were juxtaposed with three Evans originals, "The Pan Piper," "Saeta" and "Solea."  Myers characterizes the conceptual framework as, "Davis' piercing, crying solos supported by Evans' sighing, sophisticated orchestrations that both provoked and mirrored Davis' lines."  The quintet lineup was again fine-tuned in 1961 for Someday My Prince Will Come, Coltrane's final Columbia recording with Miles (on the opening title track, from Disney's Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, and a Miles original, "Teo").  Tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley actually doubles with Trane on the title track, but has the tenor chair to himself on the other tracks, Miles originals ("Pfrancing," "Drad-Dog"), and American Songbook staples "Old Folks" and Johnny Mercer's closing "I Thought About You."  Though separated in time by five summers, the Newport Jazz Festival performances by Miles' sextet in 1958 (Adderley, Coltrane, Evans, Chambers, Cobb), and Thelonious Monk's quartet in 1963, as heard on Miles And Monk At Newport, are remarkably seamless.  As Mark Wilder told Myers, "I originally assumed that this album was going to need the most work to capture the original mono sound.  After all, the Davis cuts were recorded in 1958, Monk's in 1963, and both were recorded outdoors.  Surprisingly, though, the master tapes were exactly like the original LP pressing and needed no fine-tuning." "For the producers and engineers who toiled on Davis' albums between 1955 and 1963, mono was considered the purest and most unadulterated recorded expression of the trumpeter's genius," Myers writes.  "Stereo versions of Davis' albums weren't made available until Kind of Blue in August 1959, and even then mono continued to be a priority since stereo LPs were marketed initially only to the small number of upscale consumers with stereo systems." The Original Mono Recordings follows in the tradition of the eight-time Grammy Award®-winning Miles Davis Series of multiple-CD box sets that began in 1996.  The series culminated in the 2009 box set of 52 mini-LP replica jacketed albums, The Complete Miles Davis Columbia Album Collection, whose contents were all heard in stereo. The Original Mono Recordings was produced for release by multiple Grammy Award®-winners Steve Berkowitz and mastering engineer Mark Wilder, who have overseen the Miles Davis Series since its inception more than 18 years ago, and the Miles Davis Bootleg Series since it was introduced in 2011. The Original Mono Recordings by Miles Davis: Disc One: 'Round About Midnight by The Miles Davis Quintet (originally issued March 4, 1957, as Columbia CL 949)  Selections:  1. 'Round Midnight (recorded 9/10/56) * 2. Ah-Leu-Cha (10/27/55) * 3. All of You (9/10/56) * 4. Bye Bye Blackbird (6/5/56) * 5. Tadd's Delight (6/5/56) * 6. Dear Old Stockholm (6/5/56). Disc Two: Miles Ahead by Miles Davis + 19 (originally issued October 14, 1957, as Columbia CL 1041)  Selections:  1. Springsville (recorded 5/23/57) * 2. The Maids of Cadiz (5/6/57) * 3. The Duke (5/6/57) * 4. My Ship (5/10/57, from the Broadway musical, Lady in the Dark) * 5. Miles Ahead (5/10/57) * 6. Blues for Pablo (5/23/57) * 7. New Rhumba (5/23/57) * 8. The Meaning of the Blues (5/27/57) * 9. Lament (5/27/57) * 10. I Don't Wanna Be Kissed (By Anyone But You) (5/27/57). Disc Three: Milestones by Miles Davis (originally issued December 1, 1958, as Columbia CL 1193)  Selections:  1. Dr. Jekyll (recorded 3/4/58) * 2. Sid's Ahead (3/4/58) * 3. Two Bass Hit (2/4/58) * 4. Miles (2/4/58) * 5. Billy Boy (2/4/58) * 6. Straight, No Chaser (2/4/58). Disc Four: Jazz Track by Miles Davis (originally issued October 19, 1959, as Columbia CL 1268)  Selections:  1. Generique * 2. L'assassinat de Carala * 3. Sur l'autoroute * 4. Julien dans l'ascenseur * 5. Florence sur les Champs-Elysees * 6. Diner au motel * 7. Evasion de Julien * 8. Visite du vigile * 9. Au bar du Petit-Bac * 10. Chez le photographe du motel * 11. On Green Dolphin Street (recorded 5/26/58) * 12. Fran-Dance (5/26/58) * 13. Stella By Starlight (5/26/58).  (Tracks 1-10, music from the Louis Malle film, Ascenseur pour l'echafaud, recorded in Paris, 12/4 & 5/57.) Disc Five: Porgy And Bess by Miles Davis (originally issued March 9, 1959, as Columbia CL 1274)  Selections:  1. The Buzzard Song (recorded 8/4/58) * 2. Bess You Is My Woman Now (7/29/58) * 3. Gone (7/22/58) * 4. Gone, Gone, Gone (7/22/58) * 5. Summertime (8/18/58) * 6. Bess, Oh Where's My Bess (8/4/58) * 7. Prayer (Oh, Doctor Jesus) (8/4/58) * 8. Fishermen, Strawberry and Devil Crab (7/29/58) * 9. My Man's Gone Now (7/22/58) * 10. It Ain't Necessarily So (7/29/58) * 11. Here Come de Honey Man (7/29/58) * 12. I Loves You, Porgy (8/18/58) * 13. There's a Boat That's Leaving Soon for New York (8/18/58). Disc Six: Kind Of Blue by Miles Davis (originally issued August 17, 1959, as Columbia CL 1355)  Selections:  1. So What (recorded 3/2/59) * 2. Freddie Freeloader (3/2/59) * 3. Blue In Green (3/2/59) * 4. All Blues (3/2/59) * 5. Flamenco Sketches (4/22/59). Disc Seven: Sketches Of Spain by Miles Davis (originally issued July 18, 1960, as Columbia CL 1480)  Selections:  1. Concierto de Aranjuez (recorded 11/20/59) * 2. Will o' the Wisp (3/11/60, from "El amor brujo") * 3. The Pan Piper (3/10/60) * 4. Saeta (3/11/60) * 5. Solea (3/11/60). Disc Eight: Someday My Prince Will Come by Miles Davis (originally issued December 11, 1961, as Columbia CL 1656)  Selections:  1. Someday My Prince Will Come (recorded 3/20/61, from the Walt Disney film, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs) * 2. Old Folks (3/20/61) * 3. Pfranc­ing (3/7/61) * 4. Drad-Dog (3/7/61) * 5. Teo (3/21/61) * 6. I Thought About You (3/21/61). Disc Nine: Miles And Monk At Newport (originally issued May 11, 1964, as Columbia CL 2178)  Selections:  1. Ah-Leu-Cha * 2. Straight, No Chaser * 3. Fran-Dance * 4. Two Bass Hit (tracks 1-4 by the Miles Davis Sextet, recorded 7/4/58) * 5. Nutty * 6. Blue Monk (tracks 5-6 by the Thelonious Monk Quartet, recorded 7/4/63). MilesDavis.com

NEW RELEASES - STEVE GADD BAND, JANIS SIEGEL, PATRICK YANDALL Posted: 04 Sep 2013 05:32 AM PDT STEVE GADD BAND - FADDITUDE 2013 album from the legendary drummer. For Gadditude, his tenth outing as a leading and second for BFM Jazz, Steve Gadd got a little help from his distinguished friends - guitarist Michael Landau, keyboardist Larry Goldings, trumpeter Walt Fowler and bassist Jimmy Johnson. Together they had already established a high degree of bandstand chemistry as the touring band for superstar singer-songwriter James Taylor. That goes a long way in explaining the sense of comfort and ease from track to track on this relaxed session recorded in just one week at Landau's home studio. ~ amazon.com JANIS SIEGEL - NIGHT SONGS Over the years, Janis has sung lead on many of the Manhattan Transfer's biggest hits, including 'Operator,' 'Twilight Zone,' 'The Boy from New York City,' 'Mystery,' 'Spice of Life,' 'Shaker Song,' 'Birdland,' 'Ray's Rockhouse,' and the 5-million selling 'Chanson D'Amour.' Her first solo album, Experiment in White, was released in 1981. At Home, her second solo effort, garnered Janis a Grammy nomination for Best Female Jazz Vocal.  The second album with Fred Hersch, Slow Hot Wind, was released in 1995 on Varese/Sarabande Records. Janis and Fred have toured extensively in the U.S. and Japan, and have also done radio concerts, T.V. and private dates. Her fifth solo album entitled The Tender Trap was released by Monarch Records in 1999, was produced and arranged by Fred Hersch, and featured Russell Malone, Matt Wilson, Victor Lewis, Michael Brecker and Hank Crawford. I Wish You Love, released in 2002, marked her first CD for the Telarc label and a return to working with longtime collaborator and friend Joel Dorn. Friday Night Special followed in 2003 featuring soul jazz and bluesy grooves with a first-rate organ and tenor ensemble consisting of Joey DeFrancesco and Houston Person. Her most recent Telarc release, 2004's Sketches of Broadway, was produced and arranged by longtime friend Gil Goldstein. Janis will be touring on Night Songs in 2013. ~ amazon.com PATRICK YANDALL - SOUL GRIND 2013 release, the 15th album from the Smooth Jazz guitarist. Produced and engineered by Yandall (who also writes 11 of the 14 tracks), this is very much his own project and a resounding showcase for his art. Yandall's music is typified by an easy grooving San Diego vibe that is consistently to die for. Despite a mellow introduction, 'It's Time' quickly takes on something of a Steely Dan attitude and, talking of Steely Dan, Patrick takes time out for a sumptuous reimagining of the band's 'Josie.' One of only three covers it is in the good company of a handsome take on the timeless 'Human Nature' and an immaculate rendition of Larry Carlton's 'Room 335' from his 1977 self-titled debut. ~ amazon.com

GHOST TRAIN ORCHESTRA - BOOK OF RHAPSODIES Posted: 04 Sep 2013 05:14 AM PDT Book of Rhapsodies is Ghost Train Orchestra's second album, following their highly acclaimed debut Hothouse Stomp (2011). In this adventurous installment, Ghost Train Orchestra plus a six-member choir perform bandleader Brian Carpenter's modernistic reimaginings of four unusual ensembles from the late 1930s: The Alec Wilder Octet, The John Kirby Sextet, The Raymond Scott Quintette, and Reginald Foresythe and His New Music. Produced by Grammy award winner Danny Blume and featuring Carpenter's surreal arrangements for 12-member orchestra plus choir, Book of Rhapsodies delivers the rich experience of transporting the listener to the past and using that past to transform the future. Decades before composer/conductor Gunther Schuller coined the term Third Stream to describe a genre straddling the line between jazz and classical music, New York became the epicenter of a new movement of composers whose work seemed to exist outside the margins. In the late 1930s, a small cadre of forward-thinking composers began creating small ensembles with unorthodox instrumentation to realize some of the strangest and most evocative music of the period. With Book of Rhapsodies, Ghost Train Orchestra travels ten years ahead from Hothouse Stomp to tackle Brian Carpenter's new rearrangements of late 1930s chamber jazz by four seminal bandleader/composers: Alec Wilder, John Kirby, Raymond Scott, and Reginald Foresythe. The Ghost Train Orchestra's debut album Hothouse Stomp  listed on several 2011 top ten lists: NPR, New York Jazz Record, Boston Globe, JazzTimes, The Sound Room, and Stereophile Magazine. Brian Carpenter was featured on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross and the album reached the top 10 of the Billboard Jazz charts. Downbeat Magazine raved "Carpenter and his little big band don't just recreate musical museum pieces; they breathe fire and life into this amazing musicŠthe only thing better than hearing this recording would be seeing the band live." The Ghost Train Orchestra was formed in 2006 after Carpenter was selected as the musical director for an event marking the 90th anniversary of the historic Regent Theater in Arlington, MA. Since then the band has performed regularly in New York City, home of all its members except the leader, a Boston resident. Book of Rhapsodies was recorded at Brooklyn Recording Studio after a string of monthly shows at Brooklyn's colorful Jalopy Theater. Carpenter rearranged the music for orchestra, adding strings, low brass, guitar, and a six-member choir featuring members of the Philip Glass/Robert Wilson opera Einstein on the Beach. Acclaimed artist Noah Woods created the cover and booklet artwork inspired by the strange and descriptive song titles of the original composers. In 2001, Carpenter moved to Boston to direct a film documentary on the life and legacy of Albert Ayler. He subsequently founded the sprawling Boston-based band Beat Circus and composed an acclaimed "Weird American Gothic" trilogy of dark Americana albums. He also leads Brian Carpenter & the Confessions, whose music is primarily song-oriented, with Carpenter as lead singer and lyricist. He was recently commissioned by the Berkeley Repertory Theater in California as composer and lyricist for "true crime" musical The Barbary Coast, based on the book by Herbert Asbury. In addition, he produces radio programs on WZBC-FM at Boston College, including recent documentaries on Sam Rivers, Raymond Scott, and film sound design. His Ghost Train Orchestra features an outstanding roster of talent: alto saxophonist Andy Laster (Satoko Fujii), clarinetist Dennis Lichtman (Mona's Hot Four, Nation Beat), tenor saxophonist Petr Cancura (Joe Morris), trombonist Curtis Hasselbring (Ballin' the Jack), tubist Ron Caswell (Slavic Soul Party), violinist Mazz Swift (Burnt Sugar), guitarist Avi Bortnick (John Scofield), bassist Michael Bates, and drummer Rob Garcia (Joseph Jarman, Vince Giordano). Book of Rhapsodies will be released on October 8, 2013.