Jazz for aficionados

Jazzcourier,
Thanks for introducing me to Warren Vache, I'll get some of his recordings. Frogman thanks for the audio clip, Bill Charlap I'm familiar with and have seen him live twice in my town.

A really good Kenny Barron recording is "Live at Bradley's" there are two different CDs covering various sets . He's joined by Ben Riley and Ray Drumond.Exceptional playing and well recorded.

A lesser known but fine pianist is Tardo Hammer, he beautifully pays tribute to the wonderful music of Tadd Dameron.The CD is "look, stop and Listen" this is well played and very well recorded.
Regards,

More on Warren Vache.The best Vache/ John Allred recording is "top self" Arbors ARCD 19399 This a a well thought out session with Tardo Hammer on piano(check out his own recordings,especially the Tadd Dameron collection) and leans to a tighly arranged program of some good lesser known tunes by Blue Mitchell and Clifford Brown and some more well known works by Cannonball,Golson,and Bud Powell mixed with some standards.This is a hot band leaning towards a definite Bop slant.The Vache/Allred "Live in Bern" Arbors ARCD 19369 is almost all standards and is a great blowing session,again with Hammer, and this time they work in two Horace Silver pieces into the program.Straight ahead blowing you could hang your laundry on,pardon me if i'm swinging!
Vache's most recent work is on the English Woodville label (WYCD 132)with a small group of Brits led by label ownwer Alan Barnes."The London session" is a terrific outing of mainly standards played expertly.Barnes is almost totally unknown in the states and is a wonderful multi-reed player with the alto and clarinet being his babies.I like his alto playing,a touch of Benny Carter and a bit of Art Pepper(he recorded a tribute album to Pepper a few years ago)he is a world class player waiting to be heard.The Woodville label has some great recordings but has no distribution in the U.S. so they have to be purchased directly from Alan,who will likely send you an email"Off to the post,enjoy the music!" you gotta love that.Vache is on fire on this session,these are good,but unknown players...unless you live in the U.K.
"Ballads and other cautionary tales" (Arbors ARCD 19430) is from 2011 and finds Warren again with Tardo Hammer and this time the much under rated Richard Wyands on piano.Houston Person is a guest on tenor on three tracks(a great rapport) and John Allred guests on a track.This is cornet playing of great emotional depth.Sentimental,ironic,a little wistful,passionate and full of the technical whoha to pull in off.Have not heard this kind of playing since the Miles/Red Garland sessions.
Warren Vache stays in his big boy pants for all these recordings,they are devine.

Jazzcourier,

I second the appreciation mention of Warren Vache. I am always looking for overlooked jazz players and I plan to take a listen. There are just a lot of good players that are overlooked. I got turned on to French sax player Barney Wilen about a year ago, who recorded a couple of albums with Miles in the late '50s in Europe, including the Elevator to the Gallows soundtrack, and also with Art Blakey. He has some excellent recordings on the Venus label as a leader.

Rok, together we have answered a consistent question of Foster_9's. Why can't he ever find a CD or LP of the live performances? Everything we want is before CD's, and LP's had very constrictive time restraints, consequently, those live performances that went as long as 20 minutes on one song, could not be comfortably accommodated.

Switzerland or Germany, I'm glad I got to see that extended performance of "Jive Samba", and Joe Zawinul, does an incredible solo on "Angel Eyes". This was a very fortuitous mistake.

Enjoy the music, and keep em comin.

Rok, to further confuse things, the CD you have doesn't have all the tunes I heard on the concert, but believe me "Switzerland and Germany" are the same in regard to the music, year, and musicians. It's just like they picked up the band and moved next door, they even had on the same type of clothes, no more confusion.