Emilio Díaz, guitarist, arranger and Argentine composer. From an open and versatile musical style in genres, jazz, funk and blues, Latin jazz, Argentine music, candombe, bossa nova, samba and African rhythms are mixed in a unique style of guitar and electric guitar playing. It reached an exceptional musical level, like composer and arranger. It was an early child who started playing the guitar at the age of 4 in an autodidact manner; Since then it showed a great natural talent, and at 14 it played with soloists and bands of its city. Born in the province of Jujuy, northern Argentina, then in 2006 he settled in the city of Tucumán. In 2013, he auditioned for Berkle College of Music with Oscar Stagnaro, an outstanding musician. Accepted to the institution. His artistic activity as sideman was varied, of flamenco, Argentine folklore, tango, rock and Latin music, recording and directing several musical projects.

It should come as no surprise that Land of the Sun, a collection of Mexican ballads written by three of Mexico's most prominent modern composers, is yet another chapter in Charlie Haden's continually unfolding musical biography. Haden was given a folder of songs by the late and legendary Mexican composer José Sabre Marroquín by his daughter as a thank-you for his recording of "Nocturnal." Haden went over the tunes and decided to record some of them; he turned them over to pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba for arranging, employed a stellar band, and Land of the Sun is the end result. What a result. There are eight compositions by Marroquín and one each by Augustín Lara and Armando Manzanero, in their own right prolific and revered songwriters who have been recorded in this country by Presley, Sinatra, and Bennett, to name a few.

Joe Sample is the golden boy of American fusion-jazz, but his recent project Children of the Sun is not as sunny as the title might imply. Stimulated by a visit to the Caribbean island of St. Croix, he started to look particularly into the subject of slavery – a part of his own family history. Sample has been planning this project since 1995, and will bring his composition to the Berlin audience with the NDR Bigband (the Hamburg Radio Big Band), arranged by Jorg Achim Keller.

Beautiful is the 1970 CD by percussionist Candido Camero, who worked under the mononym Candido. This 2003 remastered CD was also a Blue Note item.

The original Banda Black Rio were one of the great Brazilian bands of the 1970s and 80s. Formed by saxophonist Oberdan Magalhães, they were pioneers of the country’s soul, samba and funk movement, and played a key role in Rio’s black music scene in the days of the military dictatorship. The band stopped playing after Oberdan’s death in 1984, but have now been revived by his son William, a singer and multi-instrumentalist who wrote or co-wrote every track on a set that’s remarkable mostly for the number of celebrities who agreed to join in. Left to themselves, as on the title track, the band play cool, tight and rhythmic jazz-funk with a Brazilian edge, mixing brass with keyboards and guitar.

Banda Black Rio is a Brazilian musical group from Rio de Janeiro that was formed in 1976. It has a repertoire based on funk but also including samba, jazz and Brazilian rhythms.

"Azteca was a Latin jazz-rock-fusion group formed in 1972, started by Coke Escovedo and his brother Pete Escovedo, who had just finished stints with Latin rock pioneering band Santana. Azteca was the first large-scale attempt to combine multiple musical elements in the context of a Latin orchestra setting, and featured horns, woodwinds, multiple keyboards, three vocalists, guitars, drums, and multiple Latin percussionists.

A fluent and skilled musician, famous in his native country as a classical Spanish guitar player, Almeida went to the USA in the 40s to work in film and television studios. His jazz work was first widely exposed during a spell with Stan Kenton in the late 40s. Although continuing his film and television work, Almeida also took many opportunities to play jazz, joining forces with bass player Harry Babasin, altoist Bud Shank and drummer Roy Harte in 1953. The work of this group anticipated many of the hallmarks of the bossa nova craze that came a few years later. During his career Almeida won Grammy awards in 1959 for his performance on Danzas, and the following year for The Spanish Guitars Of Laurindo Almeida and Conversations With The Guitar…

The Jazz Club series is an attractive addition to the Verve catalogue. With it's modern design and popular choice of repertoire, the Jazz Club is not only opened for Jazz fans, but for everyone that loves good music.
Cal Tjader was undoubtedly the most famous non-Latino leader of Latin jazz bands, an extraordinary distinction. From the 1950s until his death, he was practically the point man between the worlds of Latin jazz and mainstream bop; his light, rhythmic, joyous vibraphone manner could comfortably embrace both styles. His numerous recordings for Fantasy and Verve and long-standing presence in the San Francisco Bay Area eventually had a profound influence upon Carlos Santana, and thus Latin rock…

The Jazz Club series is an attractive addition to the Verve catalogue. With it's modern design and popular choice of repertoire, the Jazz Club is not only opened for Jazz fans, but for everyone that loves good music.
Walter Wanderley was a talented and gifted organist with an acute ear for new harmonies. With 46 recorded solo albums in his entire career, both in Brazil and the U.S., he reached number 26 on the Billboard pop charts in September 1966, opening a large pathway of success only menaced by himself and his complex character. Ten years after his death from cancer, with a new fad coming, he was repackaged by the entertainment industry as a mere lounge player, carrying his record sales even further and sending the cost of his out-of-print albums to the stratosphere, but all at the cost of minimizing his significance…

The Jazz Club series is an attractive addition to the Verve catalogue. With it's modern design and popular choice of repertoire, the Jazz Club is not only opened for Jazz fans, but for everyone that loves good music.

The legendary Preservation Hall Jazz Band present the soundtrack to A Tuba to Cuba, the critically acclaimed documentary directed by T.G. Herrington and Danny Clinch. The film follows Ben Jaffe of New Orleans’ famed Preservation Hall Jazz Band as he seeks to fulfill his late father's dream of retracing their musical roots to the shores of Cuba in search of the indigenous music that gave birth to New Orleans jazz.

Finally Blue Note issues a Latin collection from its Italian (Italiana SPA) and Brazilian (EMI-Odeon) vaults that reveals the true diversity of its catalog and exploits some of the serious sensuous grooves that DJs have been spinning for over a decade. This is the first of three volumes, all of which feature the rarest most representative tracks from the various trends in jazz that grew out of Brazilian pop in the '60s, '70s, and even '80s. For starters, there's the mean brass swagger of Luis Amuda Perez on "Upa Neguinho," which was written by Edu Lobo. Besides being a popular dance tune (you can hear that in the opening measures), it is a masterpiece of Brazilian big band arrangement. Also featured is the stellar "Noa Noa," a trademark of Sergio Mendez. This is a tough bossa nova trio jam, with arpeggiated piano figures cutting right through the rhythms in the tune. In addition, Mandrake Som's "Beriambu" was the first to utilize in a swinging pop jazz context the use of the one string percussion instrument – there's also a very soul-jazzy sax solo in the break. This set's full of warm, frighteningly good examples of bossa, samba, and even the MPB and Joven Guarda rhythms as they inform folk and jazz melodies and modal figures.

Originally a flamenco player, Paco de Lucia helped to expand that music, folding in its complex harmonics and fluid sense of phrase and understatement. He expanded jazz by weaving in flamenco's more complex rhythms, organic melodies, and timbral slips. This 17-cut collection details de Lucia's development from the beginning of his second decade as a leader in 1965 to his more experimental and expansive period through the late '90s when he had come full circle and returned to flamenco properly. De Lucia's music was always rooted in flamenco even at its most adventurous; that thread was always audible, and this set proves that in a fascinating way. The music here can be jarring in its brilliance at times, but it is always clearly delineated and its purpose is direct, full of nuance, beauty, and fiery precision, as well as plenty of soul.

Compiled by the man largely responsible for the 'acid jazz' movement [a tongue in cheek answer to 'acid house'!], Jazz Juice was Gilles Peterson's first series of compilations made when he was still in his early twenties. The selections across these eight volumes were lovingly compiled and came to represent what was to be a resurgence of interest in all things 'cool' in jazz in the eighties, when jazz was brought to the club dancefloors via DJ sets for the first time and lost Afro-Cuban & Latin Jazz, rare grooves and Blue Note releases were keenly revived. Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Sergio Mendes, Jon Hendricks, Marcos Valle, Woody Herman, Dave Brubeck, and more..