This live set features tenor great Ben Webster playing with pianist Jimmy Rowles, guitarist Jim Hall, bassist Red Mitchell, and drummer Frank Butler in a club, and the music is consistently wonderful. Whether showing warmth and sentimentality on "Georgia on My Mind" and "Stardust" or growling and roaring on "Caravan" and "Ole Miss Blues," Webster (who was then somewhat taken for granted) is in superior and creative form. Recommended. [The Japanese JVC release and Analogue Productions limited-edition "Gold" release of At the Renaissance restore the original track recording sequence.]
Scott Yanow, All Music Guide

Preceded by Cookin' and Relaxin', Workin' is a mix of standards and originals, up-tempos and ballads, and a trio number, "Ahmad's Blues." The music this quintet made in the mid-Fifties period will live forever: the excitement of the emerging John Coltrane; the informed, melodic swing of Red Garland; the tremendous snap and pop of the rhythm trio of Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones; and Miles's poignancy and intense swing. Originally recorded in 1956, but not released until 1959.

Recorded three years before his landmark album Kind Of Blue (Columbia, 1959), Cookin' was part of Davis' remaining five-album commitment to Prestige, recorded a year to the day after Georges Avakian lured him to Columbia in October, 1955. The DCC remaster is bound to draw comparisons with the equally brilliant XRCD remaster which came later, and the even later disappointing Rudy Van Gelder remaster.

All selections on Steamin', save for Monk's Well, You Needn't were recorded at the first session. They are all performed with a nonchalant effortlessness that betrays the experience the band has with this familiar material. "Surrey with the Fringe on Top" from Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! is an example of the unlikely material Davis was to include in his Book. The sound quality is now so refined following remastering that one can hear John Coltrane moving on-mike for his solo. The warmth of the Van Gelder Studio is well retained on Hoffman's remaster. Salt Peanuts, left over from Davis' Be Bop days is wholly complimented by Jones' aggressive drumming. Davis is muted on Something I Dreamed Last Night as he was on the opener, defining what would become the most identifiable trumpet sound of the 1950s.

A wise man once said that darkness hates the light. The truth has an amazing application to perhaps the biggest fraud of our era: global warming.
Author and meteorologist Brian Sussman's thorough investigation into the motives, practices, and ultimate agenda of these radical agents of change is critical to individuals who wish to untangle the web of deceit being sold as concern for the environment.

When a retrofit of electric guitars transformed "Sounds of Silence" into Simon & Garfunkel's folk-rock entrée, the partners and their label hastily followed with a like-titled album mixing Paul Simon's acoustic folk songs with plugged-in bids for radio play. By contrast, this successor, released less than a year later, more coherently and convincingly reveals Simon's broadening horizons as a writer and the duo's nascent studio perfectionism. The title song remains a haunting signature piece, relying on acoustic guitar and harpsichord to carry its contrapuntal marriage of English ballad and antiwar plaint; such acoustic delicacy prevails throughout and has proven more durable than by-the-numbers wattage. The first great S&G album, the set includes "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)," "Homeward Bound," "Dangling Conversation," and Art Garfunkel's luminous solo piece, "For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her." (The 2001 reissue adds a pair of unreleased demos to the original work.)
Sam Sutherland

John Coltrane brought a new sound and style to jazz, and he applied it in his own unique way to the standard material of the storehouse of American music gathered from Broadway, Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley. With the excellent rhythm team of Red Garland, Paul Chambers (both of whom had done so many concert, club and recording dates with him) and Jimmy Cobb and the Miles-directed flugelhorn of Wilbur Harden, Trane puts his personal stamp on numbers not done that often like Henry Nemo's "Don't Take Your Love from Me," Fred Ahlert's "I'll Get By" and two more familiar yet still not overdone songs, Richard Rodgers' "Spring Is Here" and Bronislau Kaper's "Invitation."

His Band and the Street Choir is the fourth solo album by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison, released on 15 November, 1970 (see 1970 in music) by Warner Bros. Records. The album was originally to be called Virgo's Fool, but for the album's release the name was changed. Recording began in spring 1970 at the A&R Studios in New York, and ended in the summer of the same year. The songs have a free, relaxed sound to them, whilst the simple lyrics lack the level of poetry expected in Morrison's songs. The songs were intended to be recorded a cappella (with only vocal backing) by the group Morrison billed as the Street Choir. However the five songs released on the album that included the choir also featured a backing band as well. These changes, among others, in the production of His Band and the Street Choir have lead Morrison to think little of the album in later years, despite it charting well and receiving good reviews at the time of its release.

Strumming gently on an acoustic guitar, Morrison begins to sing the first of several strange, stark songs he has been recently performing in small venues on the east coast to general disinterest. Around him, listening intently, are gathered three jazz musicians of the highest calibre: bassist Richard Davis, who had played with the likes of Miles Davis and Sarah Vaughan, guitarist Jay Berliner, best known for his work with Charles Mingus, and drummer Connie Kay, a member of the esteemed Modern Jazz Quartet. They had been assembled, alongside arranger Larry Fallon, by producer Lewis Merenstein, who on first hearing the songs had immediately sensed that they would not work in a rock setting.

Although primarily a Baroque music scholar, Joshua Rifkin (however unintentionally) pretty much spearheaded the Joplin revival in the '70s, and this CD reveals that even after thirty-plus years his recordings are still the best. The emotional content on these recordings is incredible not only for its depth, but for its variances; Rifkin subtly varies his playing style strain by strain, and in some cases even measure by measure, to capture the ever-changing moods of each rag. Many performers of Joplin play each piece with the same style and approach throughout, resulting in an emotionally flat experience that sounds like "a bunch of saloon music." Rifkin, conversely, has a keen understanding of what feeling each rag is trying to convey, resulting in a performance that gives us a fresh, new sound with each track, while displaying the subtle brilliance and Classical influence of Joplin's music as a whole. Ryan Richards

Abacab was the first Genesis album to break the hallowed million-copy mark stateside. But Abacab wasn't entirely about charting Top 40 singles ("No Reply At All," "Man on the Corner," and the title track); it still exhibited some late-stage evidence of a trio courting the art-rock muse that had graced its past ("Who Dunnit," "Dodo," "Keep It Dark").

Abacab was the first Genesis album to break the hallowed million-copy mark stateside. But Abacab wasn't entirely about charting Top 40 singles ("No Reply At All," "Man on the Corner," and the title track); it still exhibited some late-stage evidence of a trio courting the art-rock muse that had graced its past ("Who Dunnit," "Dodo," "Keep It Dark").
This Gold Standard collectors' edition has been scrupulously remastered from the original master tapes. Included are a jewel-boxed gold compact disc and a special booklet with complete credits, all original LP artwork, new liner notes and photographs.

With Duke, their second album as a trio, Genesis continue to rack up commercial success in inverse proportion to the creative losses they suffered with the successive departures of lead singer Peter Gabriel and guitarist Steve Hackett.
Compared to the conceptual musical pretensions of A Curious Feeling and Smallcreep's Day, the previous year's surprisingly limp solo outings by keyboardist Tony Banks and bassist Mike Rutherford, Duke serves as a testament to strength, even in reduced numbers. As art rock goes, Turn It On Again is vibrant rock & roll with keyboards, rhythm section and vocalist deliberately working at rhythmic cross-purposes. Such typical examples of the group's epic classicism as Duchess, Man of Our Times, Duke's Travels and Duke's End possess a refreshing urgency marked by singer-drummer Collins' confident snap and the cool orchestral breeze of Banks' ivory armory.

RCA Japan's Works for Violin and Orchestra features four concerts performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1955 and 1958: Aram Khachaturian (1903~1978) : Violin Concerto, Camille Saint-Saens (1835~0915) : Havanaise , Op.83, Ernest Chausson (1855~1899) : Poeme , op.25, and Camille Saint-Saens (1835~0915) : Introduction et Rondo Capriccioso , op.28. This collection is currently available only on import outside of Japan.

When the departures of original frontman Peter Gabriel and guitarist Steve Hackett left Genesis a studio trio of Phil Collins, Tony Banks, and Mike Rutherford, few could have expected the band to climb to greater levels of commercial success. But that's exactly what happened, and Genesis' left-field rebirth as an unlikely pop act began with this album, which introduced the newly slimmed-down lineup. But that's not the whole story. While the haunting love song Follow You, Follow Me introduced the band to the singles charts, elsewhere the group's penchant for accessibly complex composition and evocative lyrical dramas is in force on tracks like Deep in the Motherlode, Burning Rope, Down and Out, and Ballad of Big.
Scott Schinder