French accordion maestro Galliano brings this band to the London jazz festival on 17 November and the mix is certainly tempting – Nino Rota's timeless movie themes interpreted by an elite international jazz quintet featuring Dave Douglas on trumpet, John Surman on reeds, Boris Kozlov on bass and Clarence Penn on drums. Listeners attracted more by the lineup than the material should note that the jazz shades and subtly skews the compositions rather than taking them over, and that Surman in particular isn't much heard outside of his ensemble role.

Richard Galliano has recorded several tristesse fests in his time, but at his best he's a creative composer and improviser who has a gift for non-generic orchestration and who is at home with a variety of atmospheres and emotions, including the happy and the optimistic. Luz Negra, recorded with his Tangaria Quartet and his first studio album since 2001's Face To Face (Dreyfus Jazz), presents Galliano at his very best, and anyone with an aversion to accordion music would do well to check it out.

This sequel to the 2003 tribute Word of Mouth Revisited showcases the compositions and arrangements of the legendary bassist Jaco Pastorius. It features Pastorius-influenced bassists, including Victor Wooten, Mark Egan, Gerald Veasley, and Marcus Miller, with a number of Pastorius' ex-sidemen, from trumpeters Randy Brecker and steel drummer Othello Molineaux to drummer Peter Erskine. Peter Graves–a bandmate of the flashy bassist when they both lived in Florida–leads this big band and sticks close to Pastorius' original conceptions, as evidenced by the Latin-tinged "Las Olas," guest-starring the Cuban bass giant Israel "Cachao" Lopez.

The track that showcases the classic Jaco chops of old is the 1986 recording of Mike Stern's "Mood Swings". Recorded just two months prior to Jaco checking himself into the Bellevue psychiatric ward, this is the most masterfull bass playing that I have ever heard Jaco record since Word Of Mouth. Jaco just absolutely tears this cut up. Obviously Jaco was on top of his game the day this recording was made. Jaco is all over the instument playing double-stops and litterally playing rhythm guitar licks over Mike Stern's opening statement.

Qantar is more than just another group, it is for all intents and purposes a family and a community with its own customs, growing traditions, and even language (both musical and verbal). These five artists have formed a special friendship that projects a singular energy on the bandstand and on their recordings. Indeed, all are Israeli expatriates, all living in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, all regularly hanging out at their leader’s home, sharing dinner, Turkish coffee, stories, ideas, joys and sorrows. This shared history, even though years apart, imbibes this quintet with the key to Avital’s music: the ability to bring the various rhythmic and harmonic vocabularies underpinning 20th and 21st century hardcore jazz expression to flow with a polyphonic attitude and musical multilingualism.

A modern album classic “Radka Toneff: Live in Hamburg” must be one of the finest Norwegian concert albums ever made – regardless of genre. Now this classic is being released on vinyl for the first time, in a 180 g 2LP edition with a gatefold cover. At the same time a new CD edition with an updated cover is being released. “Live in Hamburg” was released over ten years after Radka Toneff passed away, and shows a side of her that had never before been documented on a recording. The album won a Spellemannspris, the Norwegian Grammy award, in 1993. The material on the album comes from a concert the Radka Toneff Quartet held at the legendary jazz club Onkel Pös Carnegie Hall in Hamburg on 10 March 1981. The German radio station NDR broadcast an hour of the concert live, and an edited version of the recording became this album, a modern classic.

A master conguero, Santamaria at his best creates an incantatory spell rooted in Cuban religious rituals, quietly seating himself before his congas and soloing with total command over the rhythmic spaces between the beats while his band pumps out an endless vamp.

This is one of Grover Washington, Jr.'s occasional strays away from R&B-oriented jazz to play in a more straightahead setting. Switching between soprano, alto and tenor, Grover is accompanied by either Tommy Flanagan or Herbie Hancock on piano during five of the eight selections and he performs such numbers as Ron Carter's "Blues for D.P.," "Stolen Moments" and "Stella by Starlight" with swing and taste. Tenor-saxophonist Igor Butman also helps out on three songs. Worth acquiring.

Always one of the most in demand bassist and session men. He does not have a large body of work as a featured artist, but here you can catch him in a rare environment. This time he gets to lead and pick the tracks. A great find.This needs to be added to a serious jazz library, as the important jazz figure he is.

The controversial but memorable Tutu is mostly a duet between Miles Davis and the many overdubbed instruments of producer Marcus Miller (although violinist Michal Urbaniak, percussionist Paulinho da Costa, and keyboardist George Duke are among the other musicians making brief apperaances). Certainly the results are not all that spontaneous, but Davis is in top form and some of the selections (most notably the title cut) are quite memorable. Davis received the 1986 Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Soloist Grammy Award for his performance on the album.

The success of the Buena Vista Social Club series gave Cuban singer Ibrahim Ferrer the chance to finally begin his dream project in 2005, the recording of an entire album of bolero pieces, the musical form Ferrer loved above all others. Unfortunately the 78-year-old singer died in August of that year while sessions for the project were still underway, and that Mi Sueсo (My Dream) exists at all is in itself a small miracle. Ferrer left behind high-quality vocal demos of the boleros he still intended to record for the album, but these tapes were apparently misplaced and Ferrer's dream seemed destined to go unfulfilled. The demos were eventually recovered, and Mi Sueсo has finally seen the light of day. It is the perfect goodbye from Ferrer, a fitting and beautiful last testament that spotlights his easy and smoky vocals over subtle, non-intrusive arrangements generally featuring pianist Roberto Fonseca, guitarist Manuel Galbon, and bassist Cachito Lopez.

Pianist Jacky Terrasson's 2012 album Gouache is an eclectic, playful, and often beautiful album that showcases the pianist's lithe, technically adept jazz skills alongside a handful of guest artists. Terrasson is a gifted composer and improviser in a variety of jazz idioms, from straight-ahead, standards-based jazz to more contemporary and even avant-garde styles. He brings all of this to bear on Gouache. While Terrasson's virtuosic piano chops are the focal point of the release, it is also his choice of excellent sidemen here, including trumpeter Stephane Belmondo and bass clarinetist Michel Portal, that helps make the album such a buoyant and joyful listen.

With his remarkable range and phenomenal technique, Arturo Sandoval is one of the world's great trumpeters; he can do virtually anything he wants on his instrument. Some detractors have claimed that he has too much technique (is such a thing possible?) and that his recordings for GRP are a bit erratic. The latter criticism cannot be applied to this 1988 release. Sandoval is heard with a standard quartet comprised of the great pianist Chucho Valdes (the leader of Irakere), bassist Ron Matthewson, and drummer Martin Drew. Recorded in England before Sandoval broke ties with Cuba, Sandoval is in near-miraculous form on some blues, a lyrical "My Funny Valentine," and a few basic originals. Just listen to him tear through "Blue Monk," playing in the low register with the speed of an Al Hirt before jumping into the stratosphere like Maynard Ferguson.

Norway's best-selling jazz album ever is also a recording laced with tragedy. Only weeks after its 1982 release, singer Radka Toneff was found dead in the Bygdøy woods, near Oslo. She was aged thirty. The verdict was suicide caused by an overdose of sleeping pills.
Toneff was born in 1952 and by her mid-twenties had earned acclaim with her own jazz quartet. But it was Toneff's ad hoc duets with the band's pianist Steve Dobrogosz that inspired Fairytales. Recorded over two nights at the Grieg Hall in Bergen, the album has since achieved a certain folklore befitting its title. Toneff studied music at the Oslo Music Conservatory and was a jazz natural as this remarkable outing proves. At times she displays the ethereal grace of a pure diva.

A Norwegian jazz vocalist of legendary stature, Radka Toneff made her award-winning album debut in 1977 and recorded only three albums during her lifetime, which was cut short by her tragic death in 1982. Born on June 25, 1952, in Oslo, Norway, she is the daughter of a Bulgarian folksinger and studied at the Oslo Musikkonservatorium from 1971 to 1975. After founding the Radka Toneff Quintet, whose membership included Arild Andersen (bass), Jon Balke (piano), and Jon Eberson (guitar), among others, she made her solo album debut in 1977 with Winter Poem, an English-language effort. Highly acclaimed, the album was awarded a Spellemannprisen (i.e., Norwegian Grammy) in 1977 for Vocal Album of the Year and was a Top 20 hit on the Norwegian albums chart.