This album is a result of a collaboration of two musicians with distinctive style. Fleck is often called by critics the biggest banjo player of our time, because of his extraordinary albums, collaborations and performances, while pianist Roberts’ trio is considered a virtuous ensemble with a style marked by strong rythmic, melodic and dynamic contrasts.

The collaboration occured after a jam session at the Savannah Music Festival. Fleck, a long term Marcus fan, used the opportunity to arrange a performance at the next edition of the festival.

“We threw together a set of music, and played it for a packed and intrigued crowd”, said Fleck, who won 14 Grammy’s so far and was nominated 30 times for this prestigeous music award, he also holds the record as the artist with most nominations in different categories in the history of the Grammy.

“The gig was honestly amazing. There was a natural rapport between Marcus and me from the first note, and Jason Marsalis (on drums) and Rodney Jordan (on bass) were just incredible. I loved their trio conception, and was thrilled to be able to find a way to exist within it,” said Fleck.

“It was a lot of fun working with Béla on this project. He has a limitless imagination and, like our trio, he is willing to do whatever it takes to make a great record. The recording brings our two styles together in a way that I think will be really enjoyable for the listeners,” said Roberts.

Track list:

1. Some Roads Lead Home
2. I’m Gonna Tell You This Story One More Time
3. Across the Imaginary Divide
4. Let Me Show You What to Do
5. Petunia
6. Topaika
7. One Blue Truth
8. Let’s Go
9. Kalimba
10. The Sunshine And The Moonlight
11. That Old Thing
12. That Ragtime Feeling

This self tought guitarist is considered first European jazzist who had major influence on jazz, which is an orignal American music form. By combining gipsy swing and a style called “jazz manouche”, he created a cultural fact of global importance.

He spent major childhood years in a Roma settlement near Paris, playing violin and guitar and performing in Paris’ dance clubs. At the age of 18 he was badly injured in a fire that broke out in his caravan, he got havily burned and wasn’t able to use two fingers of his left hand for playing after recovery.

Despite that fact, Django invented a new playing technique that was used by many jazz guitarists afterwards, it is usually called “hot jazz guitar”.

His Roma herritage was sensible in his music, strong swing was breaking out of the way he played, his sound was crystal clear and his rythm infallible. Even thought he never got any musical education, he composed and made arrangements and showed them to his musicians on the guitar.

This great musician lived near Fontainebleau, only 40 kilometers away from Paris, where he died at the age of 43 while he was fishing on Siena river.

“Nuages” (French: clouds) is one of his best known compositions. He recorded it few dozen times and every single one reveals his ubelievable improviastional talent that made this track recognizable by the first tacts but also completely different and exciting with every new performing.

After two solo albums, the innovating Orchestrion and Grammy awarded What’s It All About where he plays baritone guitar, Pat Metheny is coming back to the discography scene with a Unity Band.

For this quartet he chose young and talented bassist Ben Williams, winner of the 2009 Thelonious Monk competition, famous saxophonist Chris Potter, and long term collaborator, drummer Antonio Sánchez.

After more than 30 years after the 80/81 album, Pat Metheny is putting a tenor saxophone on the front line and explains why: “It’s simple, I did it because of Chris Potter! As a fan, I have watched as he has become one of the greatest musicians of our time. When Antonio Sánchez invited us both to play on his debut, I immediately saw his natural way of playing and phrasing and I started thinking right then of somehow building a project around that.”

The album opens with a song called New Year with a prevailing acoustic guitar, followed by the Celtic rock inspired Roofdogs. Come and See begins with a wonderful Picasso guitar, then This Belongs To You, Leaving Town, Interval Waltz i Signals (Orchestrion Sketch) follow; the album ends with a ballad Then and Now and a rousing closer Breakdealer.

The first album of Pat Metheny’s Unity Band will be released by Nonesuch Records, right in time before the summer tour that will bring the band to Europe in June and July.

It is hard to find an even halfway music interested person who, by thinking of hits like Strangers in the Night, My Way, Cheek To Cheek or New York, New York wouldn’t remember the funny entertainer, actor and womanizer with a smile. He was simply called The Voice because of his gigantic popularity in 1940s.

Frank Sinatra started singing as a teenager learning music by ear, he never learned to read it, and his biggest influence was Bille Holiday. He accomplished serious beginnings as a singer in the mid 1930s, and earned himself a place on the music scene by singing in Tommy Dorsey’s band, after which he was singed by Columbia Records, that sold 10 million of Sinatra records per year in the 1940s.

By the age of 35 he reached the peak of his popularity, became a synonim for swing, devorced twice, had a ruined reputation by the yellow press that connected him to various maffia bosses, and finaly lost everything he had in the end.

The role in the movie From Here to Eternity that earned him an Oscar was a turning poing in his life and brough him back on the scene. His music was awarded with 11 Grammy’s, he played in 58 movies and was honored for lifetime achievemnt by the American Film Academy. He died at age 82.

In 2008, 10 years after his death, the American Congres announced 13 May Frank Sinatra Day, to honor him for the contribution he made to American culture.

American pianist and composer Carla Bley is honorary artist in residence of the Moers Festival that’s being held in Germany. On Sunday 27 May this artist will present her new piece named “La Lecon Francaise”. She is going to perform it with the Bohuslan Big Band and the Dortmund Choral Academy Boys Choir.

Music magazines are speculating that this could be the extension of her best known work – the jazz opera “Escalator over the Hill” released in 1972. Critics believed that her opera included everything important in music of the 20th century till that time.

As a composer Carla Bley is irreplacable in jazz history, especially in free jazz that rised at the beginning of the 60s. Her asymmetrical composition structures are a result of huge talent and originality. Unpredictable melodies became a distinction of her style as well as the combining of dramatic moments in music with profound humor.

She wrote for many musicians among whome are Gary Burton, Jimmy Giuffre, George Russell, Steve Swallow, Art Farmer, Paul Bley, Jack Bruce, Robert Wyatt, Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason whose solo album Nick Mason’s Fictitious Sports was completely composed by Bley.

As a leader of different ensembles she has relesed 20 albums and worked with Charlie Haden on his Liberation Music Orchestra project as composer and arranger. She performed in Sarajevo with the same Orchestra as a special guest in 2005 at the 9th edition of the Jazz Fest.

If you would like to know more about this remarkable artist, visit her interactive web site www.wattextrawatt.com.

The designer Greg Breeding used a black-and-white photo of Davis from 1970 by David Gahr and an undated black-and-white photo of Piaf made by Studio Harcourt Paris.

The stamps will be available in June in self-adhesive sheets of 20 stamps (10 of each). They will be sold at a price of 45 cents each, or $9 per sheet.

The U.S. postal service previously honored Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker and John Coltrane with stamps.

Watch a TV performance of Edith Piaf from 1959, Milord.

The ensemble, named after a composition of The Tony Williams Lifetime band, features bassist, composer and founder of the psycodelic trio Cream Jack Bruce, jazz and rock drummer Cindy Blackman Santana, best known for her over ten year collaboration with Lenny Kravitz, guitarist, composer and band leader Vernon Reid, and jazz keyboardist John Medeski, a veteran of New York’s avant-garde jazz scene fom the early 90s and member of Medeski Martin & Wood.

„The idea for Spectrum Road first came about in 2001. The eclectic music of Tony Williams was a starting point to us because we wanted to create something totally our own from the very beginning. There’s a certain type of force between us I’ve never experienced before as an artist“, says Reid.

Tony Williams passed in 1997 and is best remembered for his pioneer work on the field of fusion, combining rock, jazz and R&B. He demonstarted through his playing that the role of a drummer in a band is not only a rythm keeping one, but that he can have an important role in improvisation.

Spectrum Road will play a long anticipated concert at the Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee on 9th June, which also serves as the first show of a tour with more dates to be announced.

Keith Jarrett was born in 1945 in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He started playing piano when he turned three, and had his first concert at the age of five where he played compositions by Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and two own pieces.

His longtime collaboration with record label ECM started in 1971 and has resulted in over 60 releases that influenced many generations of young musicians. Albums like Facing You, Staircase, Moth And The Flame, Paris Concert, Vienna Concert and The Köln Concert consolidate a wide spectrum of genres: classic, jazz, folk, gospel, blues.

The solo album The Köln Concert is without precedent the best selling piano recording in the history of jazz. Till this day it was sold over in 3,5 mil copies and is still selling.

Watch a documentary The Art of Improvisation by the British director Mike Dibb, done  in collaboration with Ian Carr, the author of Jarrett’s biography. The movie was shot in 2005 on the occasion of his 60th birthday, featuring many interviews with his former and present collaborators: Jan Garbarek, Palle Daniellsson, Jon Christensen, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette, Chick Corea, Garry Burton and Manfred Eicher, producer and owner of ECM in whom Jarrett found the perfect creative partner at the beginning of his career.

Abercrombie decided  to travel back musicaly trough the sixties after various considerations with ECM founder Manfred Eicher to make a record about one particular jazz musician. However, he decided to pay tribute to an era that had crucial influence on his musical taste.

“The recordings that I was listening to back then were mostly post-bebop jazz albums, usually by artists who were stretching the forms, in their various ways”, Abercrombie explains and reminds on music of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins and Jim Hall.

The albums opens with “Where Are You” from Rollins’ album “The Bridge” from which also comes “Without A Song” that inspired the theme song of this album. “Hearing Sonny Rollins and Jim Hall on ‘The Bridge’ was an epiphany for me,” Abercrombie says. “They just turned my head around. When I heard them playing ‘Without A Song’, I thought that’s the best thing I’ve ever heard! So for this new album I wrote songs based upon it.”

Beside compositions inspired by Rollins’ album, there are also “Interplay” by Bill Evans, “Blues Connotation” by Ornette Coleman, “Flamenco Sketches” by Miles Davis, “Wise One” and “Sometime Ago” by John Coltrane, and one composition by Argentinian composer Sergio Mahanovich.

“Within A Song” was recorded in New York at the end of last year with the quartet made of Abercrombie, tenor saxophonist Joe Levano, double bassist Drew Gress and drummer Joey Baron.

* Photo – soundcheck of John Abercrombie Quartet (15th Jazz Fest Sarajevo 2011)

This jazzist, by many considered as one of the biggest, was born on this day in 1937. Right after graduation from university he started playing in an philharmonic orchestra, jazz ensembles and recorded his first tracks. Shortly after that he became a member of the second great Miles Davis quintet together with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Tony Williamson. His time with the Miles lasted from 1963 to 1968 when Dave Holland replaced him.

He has worked, and still works with the most imporrtant jazz musicians of his time. He also composed for film and television, wrote books about jazz, and is a recently retired professor of the City College of New York. He was artistic director at the Thelonious Monk Jazz Institute. He has received many appreciations among which are two Grammys, honorary doctorate from the New England Conservatory and a medal by the French Ministry of Culture, given to those who have distinguished themselves in the domain of artistic or literary creation.

His 75 birthday was officialy celebrated at a concert on 27 March at the Lincoln Center in New York. The opening was marked by Carter’s performance with 11 instrumentalists among whom were ases like Christian McBride, Ben Williams, Buster Williams and Ben Wolfe, they played Carters composition Mr Bow-Tie. The rest of the concert consisted of compositions of Carters rich musical repertoire, played by himself in different formations, among others with tenor saxophonist Benny Golson, flutist Hubert Laws, pianists Herbie Hancock and Mulgrew Miller, guitarists Jim Hall and Russell Malone and drummers Lewis Nash and Carl Allen.

Enjoy the footage of Ron Carter playing in a trio with pianist Mulgrew Miller and guitarist Bobby Broom at the French festival Jazz Sous Les Pommiers last year.