| In no particular order, just as it comes to mind:
1) Dave Douglas -- The Infinite. What a great disk. Definately a nod to Miles, yet different. Dave Douglas is just so real, so innovative. This album is SO good from start to finish.
2) Niklas Eklund and Suzanne Ryden -- Baroque music for trpt, vol. 3. I could listen to this over and over. The first track, Eternal Source of Light Divine, is divine indeed. I love the sound of period instruments, and no one plays like Eklund. His mastery of the horn on track 6 is absolutely frightening.
3) Gerard Schwarz -- The sound of trumpets. Shwarz had a way with the trumpet. Each piece on this disk kas so much energy, so much joy. Always buoyant. You've got to love his approach to ornamentation. It's all his.
4) Wynton Marsalis -- Live at Blues Alley. Wynton wails on this recording. I don't know how many hundred times I've listened to it (I haven't listened to it for years, actually, but did in my earlier days)
5) Joe Henderson -- Big Band. I can't get anough of this album. Faddis shows why he is in charge. And there is some Lew Soloff. Nicholas Payton and even Freddie Hubbard solo on this disk. But Joe Henderson is still the best part, along with the stellar arrangements of his tunes.
6) Miles -- Relaxin ("I'll play it and tell you what it is later!" "Block chords, Red. Block chords."). I'd have to take workin, cookin, and steamin as well.
7) John Elliot Gardiner -- B Minor Mass. Archiv Label. This has got to be (and I think this has been said plenty of times before) single greatest piece of music produced by western civilization. It is exhilerating.
8) CSO and Solti -- Brukner 7. This was my first introduction to Herseth. A very special recording.
9) Center City Brass Quintet -- Brass Quintets. Played perfectly by two real current stars in the trumpet world, Tony DiLorenzo and Ryan Anthony. Those two show that they can do more than play flashy. They are top shelf musicians who know how to balance, blend, and execute quintet playing flawlessly.
10) Hakan Hardenberger -- Haydn, Hummel, Hertel, Stamitz. My favorite recording of all these works. Hakan is THE man for so many reasons. His sound is so dense, yet brilliant at the same time. He is a great interpreter.
11) Dizzy Gillespie -- Gillespiana. Why isn't this album more popular? It's almost like a Dizzy version of Miles and Gil.
12) The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra -- They Came to Swing. And Swing they do. Wynton blows off the roof in so many ways on this recording, but there is also great Ellington enseble work, and a Faddis solo on Dizzy's Things to Come that is never to be forgotton. But the best part of the album is the first track. If you haven't heard this recording, with Lew S. playing the solo part, GET IT.
13) Feels like a sin to not mention Clifford, Louis, Freddie with Art Blakey (the Caravan recording is the greatest), Lee, etc., etc. But we all tend to cycle through things. The above were the things that came to mind the fastest.
Better stop.
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"The right way is the easy way." Herbert L. Clarke |