1979's The Great Train Robbery has long been one of Jerry Goldsmith's most unusual projects, both in terms of his overall output and in particular as one of his collaborations with filmmaker Michael Crichton. With the exception of The Great Train Robbery and The Thirteenth Warrior, all of the Goldsmith/Crichton collaborations (Pursuit, Coma, Runaway, Congo and Timeline) have fallen into the techno-thriller genre, and stylistically, the buoyant comic energy of The Great Train Robbery lies far afield of the darker-edged work that in general defined Goldsmith's career. For the film, Crichton adapted his own historical novel and cast Sean Connery as dashing Victorian criminal Edward Pierce. Goldsmith's score establishes the movie as a lighthearted romp from its opening downbeat and thereafter cheerfully varies between churning, steam locomotive drive and breezy elegance; the jaunty main title tune is unpredictable and boasts one of the best bridges Goldsmith ever wrote.

'The Montreux Years' showcases some of the legendary pianist's remarkable Montreux Jazz Festival live performances. The set includes brand new liner notes, as well as rare photos from his Montreux shows. Combos featured include Chick Corea Quartet, Chick Corea New Trio, Chick Corea Freedom Band, Chick Corea Akoustic Band, and Chick Corea Elektric Band, plus an appearance by The Bavarian Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra.

The Kansas City swing blues of the Sweet Baby Blues Band is very difficult not to enjoy. Jeannie Cheatham's exuberant vocals (propelled by her forcefully swinging piano) inspire the many soloists on the blues-oriented material, and there is plenty of variety in tempo and feeling to keep this set continually interesting. Among the main soloists are ageless trumpeter Snooky Young, tenorman Rickey Woodard (making his debut on clarinet on two cuts), and guest altoist Hank Crawford, who sits in on four songs.

Why aren't there more recordings like Fly Away Little Bird? Perhaps it's because there aren't more musicians of this stature. The studio reunion of the legendarily experimental Jimmy Giuffre 3 in 1992 was reissued in 2002 on the French Sunnyside label and is a radical departure from anything the trio had done in the past. These studio apparitions of the band are their most seamlessly accessible while being wildly exploratory. In addition to the consummate improvisations and compositions by Giuffre (title track, a redone "Tumbleweed"), the tender meditations by Steve Swallow ("Fits" and "Starts"), and the bottom-register contrapuntal improves by Paul Bley ("Qualude"), this is a trio recording that uses standards such as "Lover Man," a radically and gorgeously reworked "I Can't Get Started," "Sweet and Lovely," and "All the Things You Are" to state hidden textural possibilities inside chromatic harmony. There is never the notion of restraint in the slow, easy, and proactive way these compositions are approached.

Recorded during three different stays at New York's Basin Street, Jazz: Red, Hot and Cool is making its first appearance in the U.S. on CD. It documents - with the addition of two additional performances that were previously unissued - the original Brubeck quartet in its final years. In 1956 Joe Morello would replace Joe Dodge, and in 1958 Eugene Wright would take over the bass chair from Bob Bates. What strikes the listener about this band, is a having been seasoned for five years when the first of these performances were recorded, the Brubeck quartet was far more immersed in the blues than anyone - at least the critics of the time - had given them credit for…

In 1970, Willie Dixon released an album entitled I Am The Blues. It was a brash claim, but if anyone in blues history could stand up to this bit of bravura, Dixon was the man. Over the course of his career, he penned a suitcase full of tunes that defined Chicago blues - easily the most influential strand of the blues in the post-war era.
This 1991 live set - apparently recorded for a radio broadcast from a club in Long Beach California - finds him in fine form, backed by some younger Chicago musicians, including Carey Bell on harp and none other than Butch Dixon (a relation, of course) on piano. Dixon, who sounds like he's having a terrific time, lectures the highly appreciative crowd about the history of the blues and serves up fine versions of his classics "Built for Comfort" and "Rock Me."

Palestrina's settings from the Song of Songs are among his most rich and passionate work, with the erotic imagery of Solomon's words used as allegories for Christ and the Church, and they form a powerful, intense and very beautiful set of motets.

The packaging for this recording, though handsomely produced, gives a perplexing impression of the content of the CDs. The album's title (in French) is Philémon et Baucis, though there is no reference to that title in the extensive program notes, which focus exclusively on a work called Le Feste d'Apollo. In fact, Le Feste d'Apollo, premiered in 1769, consisted of a prologue and three unrelated short acts, each a self-contained opera, with texts by four different Italian poets. This CD set includes two of those operas, Aristeo and Bauci e Filemone, the third opera being an early version of Orfeo ed Eurydice written in 1762, 12 years before the definitive French version of Gluck's masterpiece.

Farther away from drum'n'bass and closer to big-beat techno (with a little turntablist mayhem thrown in), Amon Tobin's third album for Ninja Tune breaks out with a devastating opener, "Get Your Snack On." The track turns out to be just one of the highlights on Supermodified, a dense, plunderphonic kaleidoscope of an album with giant, noisy jazz breaks and groovy electronic synthwork. It's got quite a bit of the retro-sounding sampling of Permutation (orchestra strings, jazz combos, groovy psychedelic basslines) along with a wider variety of material, from driving funky-breaks productions ("Four Ton Mantis") and playful cut'n'paste numbers ("Precursor," "Chocolate Lovely"), to darkstep jungle ("Golfer Vrs. Boxer") and surprisingly touching minimalist melancholia ("Slowly," "Deo"). Tobin's again made great strides in his production skills, and the range and greatness of this material serves as proof positive.