Along with Holdsworth, this amazing performance features Allan playing with his Trio, featuring the late Dave Carpenter on bass and Gary Novak on drums, who also contributes to the liner notes for this release. The performance of Warsaw Summer Jazz Days '98 was beautifully recorded, filmed, and originally aired on Polish Television. The sound quality of both the audio and video is amazing and was digitally re-mastered from the original tapes.

Manifesto Records is proud to announce the CD/DVD release of Frankfurt ’86, the third in a continuing series of classic Allan Holdsworth live performances. In this performance at the 1986 Deutsches Jazz Festival in Frankfurt, Germany, Allan Holdsworth is accompanied by Gary Husband on drums, Jimmy Johnson on bass and Kei Akagi on keyboards. Gary Husband also contributed some very personal liner notes to the package. The performance of Frankfurt ’86 was beautifully recorded and filmed and was originally broadcast on German Television. The sound quality of the audio and picture quality of the video are both amazing and were digitally re-mastered from the original tapes.

"Jon Hassell’s 1980 album Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics, produced alongside Brian Eno, is perhaps the most common entry point in the trumpeter’s catalog, arriving during the latter’s ascendance as a pop theorist and alchemist. But Hassell’s 1977 debut contains many of the same ideas in a more muted and subtle form. Inspired by raga music, particularly the work of the vocalist Pandit Pran Nath, Hassell processes his trumpet sound and focuses on notes that change in tiny increments, giving his melodies a slippery quality where you’re never quite sure where they are coming from or where they might go next. The background is filled with quiet twitches of rattles and bells, gurgling talking drum, and snippets of bird songs, creating a bed of sound that is hard to pin down but easy to absorb as a whole. Sources stretch in all directions, from the “Shhh/Peaceful” jazz of Miles Davis to Indian classical music to twinkling New Age, but the music’s refusal to be any one thing makes each listen feel like the first one." - Mark Richardson

Coniunctio is a 1970 collaborative album between The Blue Effect and The Jazz Q Prague, the latter featuring Jiří Stivín. This is taken from the 1973 reissue released by Supraphon.

For several years, decades in fact, a lost gem issued originally not just in the US but in the UK as well (and our vinyl pressings were always much better than their US counterparts), on Chrysalis records who, for a while, had some very good material in this genre, for example the two Auracle albums (and wouldn't lots of us like to get those on CD). But finally it's now reappeared on CD and how very nice it is to be reacquainted with it in that format. Anyway, this album ~ his second, as far as I know ~ features a host of jazz luminaries of the day (Hancock, Erskine, Pastorius, Carlton, Ritenour, Gadd, etc.) and its only failing is its mildly raw upper registers, though thankfully there are no vocals to pollute the proceedings and Jaco Pastorius' electric bass work is of truly sterling calibre. On this album, if anywhere, you can hear why he was held in such very high esteem by his contemporaries.

"…Xavi returns to the piano/bass/drum jazz trio formula of “Reflections” but with a new pair of accompanists. Pianist José Carra and bassist José Manuel “Popo” Posada provide the perfect balance of tone color and energy to match Xavi’s sensitive and interpretive playing on the kit.

For his second album as a leader Tarik Hassan shows his evolution as a composer, bassist, and improviser. It features nine new original compositions that explore the cross sections of several musical cultures while remaining rooted in jazz. The result is an exciting journey through a world without borders or barriers.

The Dreaming Jewels is the 2019 album by British jazz musician Greg Foat. This was released on Athens Of The North.

Nachdem KLAUS DOLDINGER sich bereits in den 1950er und 1960er Jahren mit den Feetwarmers und anderen hochkarätigen Formationen einen internationalen Ruf als echte deutsche Jazz-Größe im Dixieland und Bebop erspielt hatte, wandte er sich 1969 dem modernen Jazzrock zu: 1969 überraschte er die Jazzwelt mit seiner Fusion-/Jazzrock-Combo MOTHERHOOD, die den Jazz auf die Höhe seiner Zeit katapultierte. Zwei Alben spielte die heute als legendär geltende Band ein: 1969 erschien das Album I Feel So Free, im Jahr darauf kam Doldinger‘s Motherhood. Tracks wie Degeneration, Song of Dying, Men’s Quarrel, Wade In The Water und Soul Town, das noch im Jahr 2007 in den Kult-Film von Steve Soderbergh „Ocean’s 13“ verwendet wurde, ebneten dem Jazz neue Wege. Bis heute gehören die Songs unter Kennern und Liebhabern mit zum Besten, was Jazz aus Deutschland je hervorgebracht hat.

Cadiz-based sextet, La Banda Morisca merge oriental and occidental influences, exploring the heritage of al-Andalus and the southern Mediterranean, inspired by Mahgrebi chaabi, the flamenco of Sevilla and Andalucian rock.

The project was formed in early 2016, leading to their debut album later that year Wisdom of Elders; a document of sessions combining Hutchings with a group of South African jazz musicians he’d long admired. His connection to the group was Mandla Mlangeni (bandleader of the Amandla Freedom Ensemble), whom he’d flown there to play with over the past few years. We Are Sent Here by History is a meditation on the fact of our coming extinction as a species. It is a reflection from the ruins, from the burning. A questioning of the steps to be taken in preparation for our transition individually and societally if the end is to be seen as anything but a tragic defeat. For those lives lost and cultures dismantled by centuries of western expansionism, capitalist thought and white supremist structural hegemony the end days have long been heralded as present with this world experienced as an embodiment of a living purgatory.

Chicago drummer and composer Jeremy Cunningham wrote The Weather Up There in response to the loss of his brother Andrew, who died in a home invasion robbery in 2008. Co-produced by Jeff Parker and Paul Bryan, and engineered by Paul Bryan and John McEntire, this new work confronts the tragedy of violence and examines the acute ripple effect on several people's lives through the lens of memory, response, and collage. Further deepening the textural and emotive impact, Cunningham formed a “drum choir” for these recordings, comprised of close mentors and colleagues Mike Reed, Makaya McCraven, and Mikel Patrick Avery. Cunningham also taps regular collaborators Ben LaMar Gay, Jaimie Branch, Tomeka Reid, Dustin Laurenzi, Matt Ulery, and Josh Johnson.

In their early days, saxophonist Jay Beckenstein molded Spyro Gyra into an ersatz fusion band that truly watered down the jazz-rock of the '70s, making way for the smooth contemporary instrumental sounds that followed. Some may have considered them pioneers, or an aberration. This 11-track CD from their early years is bookended by their best commercial tunes, "Morning Dance" and "Shaker Song." In between is the filler that rarely got radio airplay, although the light, breezy Caribbean sounds of "South Beach" and especially the robust funk of "Breakfast at Igor's" always hinted that good musicianship was behind a hollow exterior. This can be recommended to those admirers who likely already have this material, but jazz fans should search for the real thing, or explore the discography of Michael Brecker.

Brasilian Skies is the 1978 album by Masayoshi Takanaka. This is the 2013 remaster reissued by Universal Music Japan.

Rocco Zifarelli is the winner of the first edition of the Eddie Lang Award (1991), dedicated to young rising Italian jazz guitarists, for more than 20 years he is the guitarist of the Oscar winner Ennio Morricone, with whom he has recorded many soundtracks of prestigious films and performed hundreds of concerts in the best theaters and arenas from around the world.