Jazz bassist Carles Benavent and guitarist Josemi Carmona have combined talents for Nuevos Medios release Sumando, remaking the fusion of jazz and flamenco into some bright and breezy. Composing and performing most of the instrumentation of Sumando‘s nine tracks, Benavent and Carmona weave flamenco rhythms and tight, neat guitar work with some dreamy jazz themes to create a soulful mix.

The Benavent, Di Geraldo and Pardo trio emerged from the ashes of the Pardo y Benavent band, the sextet that made flamenco history and that came to an end in 1998 with an amazing tour of the most important jazz festivals from Vitoria to Montreal. It was in this sextet – a historic fact – improvisation on a flamenco beat was done for the first time, with a jazz attitude and based on the compositions of Pardo and Benavent contained in their previous albums.

Recorded in Ghana in 1981, Mick Fleetwood's solo debut reveals more diversity and depth of feeling than any of Fleetwood Mac's multi-platinum monsters. Six of the tracks are not overt attempts at worldbeat, instead using a variety of West African musicians as sidemen, sidewomen, and, in the case of drum ensemble Ebaali Gbiko, sidechildren. Of these six tracks, several stand out. "Walk a Thin Line," written by Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, is an infectious pop song blending Adjo Group's enchanting backing vocals with guest George Harrison's lush 12-string and slide guitars. Another Fleetwood Mac veteran, Peter Greenbaum (aka Peter Green), accompanies a multinational percussion section for a remake of his "Rattlesnake Shake," originally found on Then Play On. Even the Buddy Holly classic "Not Fade Away" gets supercharged with a percussion ensemble made up of Fleetwood on drums and Lord Tiki and Adjo Group on hand drums and percussion. The West African tracks that make up the remainder of the album are pure pleasure.

On October 9th the multi-instrumentalist Jack Wyllie (Portico Quartet/Szun Waves) presents his new project Paradise Cinema. It was recorded in Dakar, Senegal in collaboration with mbalax percussionists Khadim Mbaye (saba drums) and Tons Sambe (tama drums).

Joe Zawinul was a fantastic composer, musical visionary who pioneered the use of electric piano/synthesizers in modern music. He composed the soul jazz hit Mercy Mercy Mercy for Cannonball Adderly. In a Silent Way (1969) and Pharaoh's Dance for the seminal album Bitches Brew (1970) for Miles Davis and formed the Jazz Rock Fusion Band Weather Report with saxophonist/composer Wayne Shorter in 1970. After the demise of WR he formed his own world fusion band called The Zawiful Syndicate in 1988 and recorded three albums.

Pianist Omar Sosa and his band fuse divergent musical influences on the CD Prietos. Sounds from Morocco, Ecuador, Venezuela, Ivory Coast, Brazil, the United States, and Burkina Faso coalesce with musical sensibilities from Sosa's homeland of Cuba. Especially striking on Prietos is the intertwining of hip-hop verse with traditional sounding Yoruban lyrics and Afro-Cuban rhythms. Though the contrast between the urban U.S. art form and the time-honored Cuban tradition may appear to be bit incongruous, Sosa and his crew of talented musicians make it flow on such tunes as "Takes a Second."

The Oriental Jazz Project presents its new album "Proche Orience". Here are four musicians of the new generation of European Jazz, who are not afraid to mix Arab-Andalusian, and world music with modern jazz, to offer us an organic and sophisticated universe, resolutely modern… Created by the belgian-moroccan pianist Marie Fikry, the oriental Jazz project offers a repertoire of original compositions that creates a dialogue between Europe and North Africa. The oriental percussion occupies a key place as a soloist, while the piano, echoes like a Oud instrument, which offer the Oriental touch to the project.

L. Shankar's Vision is an ethereal tour-de-force – an oxymoron, perhaps, but an appropriate description of the otherworldly visions he conjures with his manipulations of his 10-string, stereophonic, double-necked, electric violin. The lengthy title track is a solo space journey on his massive instrument, with lots of phasing undercurrents and an aural experience of weightlessness that is rather pleasant. On the other tracks, Shankar is flanked by the hot, piercing Jan Garbarek on saxes and the cool Palle Mikkelborg on trumpet and flugelhorn, who contribute heat and ice to Shankar's textures.

The Dreamings is the second volume of Mike Mainieri's An American Diary project. The vibraphonist and leader appears primarily with saxophonist George Garzone, bassist Marc Johnson, and drummer Peter Erskine. But thanks to the rotating cast of guest musicians, each track is a wholly new experience, distinguished by unexpected timbres and colors.

"I’ve been wanting to record these tunes for a long time. They’ve been in my mind for years and I didn’t even dare to think that one day I’d be able to record them. The memories connected with this music have stayed with me. Like on a film, the images of the people I grew up with and of my parents changed in front of my eyes. I inherited this music from them. Each of these tunes has got its own story. I recorded them for my own pleasure, but then I thought why not let other people have them? Why not give them some pleasure as well? A lot of these people have now grown old and, like me, have dreamed of hearing this music recorded and preserved for future generations." Ivo Papasov

Alto and soprano saxophonist Perico Sambeat is considered today as one of the most important spanish jazz musicians, owning a tremendous prestige with an extraordinary musical career inside and out of Spain. With more than twenty recordings as a leader and near a hundred as a sideman, they´re specially remarkable his works with musicians as Brad Mehldau, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Tete Montoliu, Michael Brecker, Pat Metheny, and many others. Along his life, he´s received numerous awards, such as the "Bird Award" given by the North Sea Jazz Festival to the musician deserving wider recognition (2003), or the one given to the best recording of the year to "Flamenco Big Band" (2008 and 2009)

The trio of Nor Dar comes from Armenia. Right from their first album "Opus of the Lizard" (winner of the Armenian Music Awards 1998) the group showed the desire to give a broader experimental spirit of the legacy of Komitas, the father of Armenian music. The success surely comes from the unquestionable ability of the group's members at the time of using traditional instruments. And combined with the classical education and the general preoccupation with jazz, it led to a more complex musical alloy, which is obviously intended to pass the traditional and classical music of their country to a wider audience, opening new avenues of evolution.

2003 reissue of a 1984 live album from the legendary Flamenco guitarist and his group that helped modernize Flamenco and redefine for the 20th Century. "Alta Mar" was co-written with oft-time collaborator Al DiMeola.

Carles Benavent es natural del barrio del Pueblo Seco en Barcelona. Bajista, aunque también dobla con la mandolina y la mandola, Benavent ha tocado con Paco de Lucía, Chick Corea y Miles Davis, y es habitual verle tocar con Jorge Pardo. Benavent que ha trabajado en los últimos años el llamado nuevo flamenco, especialmente desde su colaboración con Paco de Lucía, que dejó como muestra el impresionante "Live in America"

On 2015's double-disc Live at Orion, Indonesian jazz fusion sextet simakDialog stretch out across their lengthiest recording yet, opening new avenues of exploration for their grooves, improvisational fire, and often astoundingly telepathic interplay. The album was cut live before a deep-listening audience at Mike Potter's prog-centric Orion Studios in Baltimore, Maryland during September 2013, the same month that simakDialog's third MoonJune album, The 6th Story, was released. Naturally, the live set includes several numbers from their concurrent studio outing, but while both The 6th Story and Live at Orion consist of nine tracks, the former was one hour in duration and the latter sprawls out to nearly two.