This is a good album that should have been great. Two lengthy originals ( "The Majesty of the Blues" and "Hickory Dickory Dock" ) find Wynton Marsalis displaying his rapidly developing writing skills, which were being prodded at the time by Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus. His sextet with pianist Marcus Roberts, tenorman Todd Williams, and altoist Wes Anderson is in outstanding form on these performances. However, the three-part "New Orleans Function" has two fatal flaws. Marsalis returned to his New Orleans heritage by welcoming the erratic clarinetist Dr. Michael White, veteran banjoist Danny Barker, trombonist Freddie Lonzo, and trumpeter Teddy Riley as guests.

Burton plays the vibroharp with superb delicacy which tops off the spirals of harmonic sound. Each track shifts in mood seamlessly from the one before - with writing credits to Goodrick, Mike Gibbs and Carla Bley before an interpretation of Weber's Colours of Chloe rounds off the record.An all time favourite jazz record, for a quieter mood. A classic ECM release.

Vibraphone innovator Gary Burton recorded a wealth of material for ECM during his 15 year tenure with the label. His anthology highlights the exceptional groups he led in the 1970s and 1980s. Burton’s quartets, quintets, and sextets introduced many remarkable players to a wider public, and these selections feature inspired performances by Pat Metheny, Mick Goodrick, Steve Swallow, Eberhard Weber, Bob Moses, Makoto Ozone and more. “We toured up to two hundred days a year,” Burton recalls. “The recordings we made were snapshots of the evolution of my working bands during this highly productive period.”

Over the course of their three-decade career, Nashville's Los Straitjackets have established themselves as America's premier surf rock group. While the band has a handful of albums that range from covers of surf rock staples to slamming originals, Los Straitjackets have released various Christmas albums and singles to much critical acclaim. Yep Roc Records has compiled every holiday song the band has ever recorded into one Los Straitjackets collection, Complete Christmas Songbook.

Fifty years after Murphey helped pioneer the Austin Music Scene (along with Jerry Jeff Walker, Gary P. Nunn and more) , his latest offering is a look at the seminal period of Austin’s music history that set the stage for the “Outlaw” movement with Nelson and Waylon Jennings, among others, and the live music scene that is still thriving there.

Since 1999, three "Klazz Brothers" Kilian Forster (bass), Bruno Böhmer Camacho (piano) and Tim Hahn (drums) have stood for a refreshing and innovative fusion of classical music with jazz and world music. For their albums "Classic meets Cuba" and "Mozart meets Cuba", which were recorded with the Duo Cuba Percussion, the Klazz Brothers from Dresden received the ECHO Prize in the category "Klassik ohne Grenzen" several times. With their new CD "Christmas meets Cuba 2", the five musicians are following up on the success album "Christmas meets Cuba", released in 2010, which brought international and German Christmas carols to new musical life. With a mixture of jazz swing and Latin feeling, spirited zest for life, Cuban serenity and moody melancholy, the Klazz Brothers and Cuba Percussion have recorded such classics as "White Christmas", "Silent Night" and George Michaels "Last Christmas". And here and there, prominent guest singers such as Olvido Ruiz and Tom Gaebel give the songs another special flair.

During his career, Anders Hagberg has proven his musical prowess as an innovative and virtuoso improviser of flutes in genres like jazz and world music. With the new album TRUST, he takes his innovative expression to a new level with cinematic vocals, suggestive grooves and enchanting melodies. He writes: The music for this album was originally created in interaction with visual artforms, such as dance, pictures, video, and sculpture… For a number of years now, I have carried out artistic research at Gothenburg University s Academy of Music and Drama. I have been looking at what you might call musical states: tonal spaces constructed by musical modes. In particular, I have focused on tone color in melody playing and the role of silence in musical expression. My work on states, sounds, and silences has informed all of the music you hear on this album.