The music made by Quincy Jones during the second half 1950s was a stunning example of contemporary jazz during that pivotal decade for the form. Listening back today to these groundbreaking records delightfully illustrate how the dynamic musician, performer, composer and arranger first introduced his extraordinary skills to the world. After spending the first half of the decade working for other musicians, including a number of freelance commissions arranging songs for renowned artists such as Dinah Washington, Duke Ellington, and his close friend Ray Charles, Jones soon decided it was time for him to take the lead. The first album release to feature Quincy as a named artist was the 1955 release on Mercury Records 'Jazz Abroad' on which he featured alongside jazz drummer Roy Haynes. Next up was, 'That's How I feel About Jazz' featuring an all star cast including Art Farmer, Lucky Johnson & Phil Woods - following which he would record and release a further six albums before the end of the 1950s, all for Mercury. Quincy Jones first eight albums, all released during this period, are featured on this 4CD set in their entirety, in glorious re-mastered sound, making this package the most complete Quincy Jones 1950s collection available today.

Continuing their globalising musical quest into 2017, Nomade Orquestra return with their second album EntreMundos set for heavyweight vinyl, CD and digital release on 23rd June 2017. Recorded at Red Bull Studios, Sao Paulo, EntreMundos is like a cosmic musical playground where Ethio-jazz, Indian classical and Oriental sounds dance around Afro-Brazilian roots rhythms and Northern hemisphere jazz, funk, soul, library music and hip-hop influences. The sheer vastness of the album is astounding, Nomade Orquestra have quite literally conquered the world in sound.

Director Sam Eastmond composed and arranged these works for the 15-piece big band Spike Orchestra, as he examines the power and magic of words through stories, splintered and fragmented through resonance and dissonance, merging influences, styles and instrumental colors over four expansive works yielding inspired moments in orchestration and soloing.

By the 1980's, Gil Evans orchestra's repertoire was a distinctive blend of Hendrix tunes, original pieces from band members and the occasional nod to Gil's earlier recordings. The set at Hamburg includes four songs from the Hendrix book, although just one of these ("Up From The Skies") was part of the original studio album. Regular appearances in Europe meant that the band had now acquired a younger following, such as many in the audience at Fabrik, one well accustomed to its rock-referent concerts. A year and a half after the concert at Fabrik, Gil Evans passed away in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Quite rightly he'll always be remembered for recording those brilliant, luminous albums with Miles Davis and under his own name, but he had, in fact, led at least three contrasting musical lives. His final years saw him directing his band at a regular Monday night gig at Sweet Basil, New York, so it's fitting that we now have this recording from Hamburg, one that serves as a memorial to his free-spirited later days. With an All Star Musicians Cast.

Three recordings, one of them previously unreleased (recorded in Hamburg for NDR), and featuring at least two generation of hard-boppers, including Jon Faddis, Herb Geller, Charles McPherson, George Coleman, Reggie Workman, Curtis Fuller, Jimmy Heath, Clifford Jordan. On the German recording some of the most eminent Americans residents of Berlin, such as Benny Bailey and Alvin Queen, can be heard.

While pianist-arranger-composer Toshiko Akiyoshi headed a fine big band in New York after moving cross-country in 1982, the orchestra that she led in Los Angeles in the 1970s was arguably her greatest accomplishment. The three-CD Mosaic Select set Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Big Band collects all of the music originally released on the RCA albums Kogun, Long Yellow Road, Tales of a Courtesan, Insights, and March of the Tadpoles. With such major players as Akiyoshi’s husband Lew Tabackin on tenor and flute, trumpeters Bobby Shew and Don Rader, trombonist Britt Woodman and altoist Gary Foster among the many soloists in the all-star band, the orchestra could swing as hard as any of its competitors. In addition to the more boppish pieces, Akiyoshi often wrote works that displayed her Japanese heritage, utilizing Eastern harmonies and instruments along with her husband’s flute. Many of the highpoints of her career are on this perfectly conceived Mosaic release.

In 1993 he recorded his first 'Little Big Band' album, followed by Vol.2 in 1998. 2006 issued third installment of the Canadian singer/guitarist's "Little Big Band" series. Colin's continuing the series with this fine set of r&b favorites, recorded with some of the finest players available. Without producing pale copies, Colin has breathed new life into these somewhat out-dated classics. Given his last name by the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, James became a national treasure of the Great White North with his soulful, crystalline pipes that twice earned him "Best Male Vocalist" Junos. For this outing, he takes on classics like "Reet Petite", "Lonely Avenue" and a host of the songs that showcase his many talents.

Helge Sunde is a 44-year-old Norwegian trombonist and composer who often works with jazz/classical composer Geir Lysne, sounds as if he checks out Hermeto Pascoal, Django Bates, Carla Bley, and British jazz and TV composer Colin Towns – and who has produced a cracker of a contemporary big-band album with this set. Sunde's Denada ensemble has produced powerful work before, but the balance of moods, melodic variety and arranging ingenuity on Finding Nymo (the sax-playing Nymo brothers Frode and Atle are star soloists) ought to raise his standing outside continental Europe. He throws listeners off the big-band scent with the eerie vocoder whispers at the start, but busy phrase-swapping between the horns, and arrhythmic ensemble riffs with solo-sax wails rising out of them introduce a Django Bates feel. When In Rome is a hooting, swaggering theme with revving engines and street noise, Valse Triste starts like a funeral lament and turns into a demonically waltzing dance, and the title track begins as tentative, sputtery improv, then coalesces into a melody. Guests Olka Konkova (piano) and Marilyn Mazur add flourishes to an already formidable set.

Given that he was one of the primary architects of bebop—revered by Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Don Cherry, and so many others—it’s surprising to note that the piano giant Bud Powell only led one session with horns. On August 9, 1949, he, trumpeter Fats Navarro, tenor saxophonist Rollins, bassist Tommy Potter, and drummer Roy Haynes cut four tunes at WOR Studios in New York: Thelonious Monk’s “52nd Street Theme,” and Powell’s originals “Bouncing with Bud,” “Dance of the Infidels,” and “Wail.” Decades later, this session caught the ears of pianist, scholar, and JazzTimes columnist Ethan Iverson.

In 1964 John Coltrane recorded A Love Supreme with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones. It's one of most influential and imposing jazz suites ever written, and on this debut CD for the Palmetto label, The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, featuring Wynton Marsalis, adapts Coltrane's immortal composition to the big band. Not to be outdone by his brother Branford's quartet version of this material recorded live on DVD, Wynton and company skillfully extend and elaborate on the Coltrane's work, and preserve the soul-searching spirit of the four-part suite, which deals with the blues, 4/4 swing, Afro-Latin rhythms, and ballads. Pulsed by Carlos Henriquez's sure-footed basslines, Herlin Riley's spiritual syncopations and Earl Lewis's profound pianisms, saxophonist Wess "Warmdaddy" Anderson's Tranish cries, and the leader's triumphant trumpet tones are as fluent and fierce as ever. Collectively, this brilliant orchestra goes where no large ensemble has gone before.

AVID Jazz continues with its Four Classic album series with a re-mastered 2CD release by Sauter-Finegan Orchestra, complete with original artwork and liner notes. Born into a musical family in Rumson, New Jersey, Bill Finegan underwent a rigorous musical training from a young age and was so advanced that he was even teaching Nelson Riddle the mysteries of orchestration while they were still at school together! He began his illustrious career in the forties initially playing and then arranging for Glenn Miller before moving on to Tommy Dorsey for whom he arranged from 1942-1952.