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CD Reviews

You can search through our extensive database of thousands of releases from Orchestral and Opera to Choral, Jazz and beyond.

 

Written by the expert critics of BBC Music Magazine and with over a hundred new reviews added every month, the archive dates back to the magazine's launch in 1992 and now includes over 20,000 reviews.

NB A few points to bear in mind when searching:

 

 

When looking for symphonies, concertos, etc., the numbers must appear as follows with a space between 'No.' and the number itself:

  • Symphony No. 2
  • Sonata No. 31

 

There is no need to include capital letters or accents in your search – the database is neither case- nor accent-sensitive.

Keith Jarrett: La Scala

Composer(s):
  • Keith Jarrett
Performer: 
Keith Jarrett (p)

With this totally improvised solo piano concert, on 13 February 1995, Keith Jarrett yet again made musical history. It happened at Italy’s famous opera house, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, which was presenting its first ever concert by a jazz musician.
 

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Henry Threadgill & Make a Move: Where’s Your Cup?

Composer(s):
  • Henry Threadgill
Performer: 
Threadgill (as, flute); Brandon Ross (g); Tony Cedras (acc, harmonium); Stomu Takeishi (el b); JT Lewis (d)

Saxophonist Henry Threadgill has inhabited the art house neighbourhood of jazz since it sprang up in the Sixties.
 
A leading member of Chicago’s abstractionist collective, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Threadgill also founded the turbulent Air trio, which won acclaim for its re-working of Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton tunes.Since then the 53-year-old has concentrated on writing often dirge-like big band music, sometimes with unexpected instrumentation.
 

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Third Rail: South Delta Space Age

Composer(s):
  • Bill Laswell
  • Jack Weaver
  • James ‘Blood’ Ulmer
  • Ziggy Modeliste
Performer: 
James ‘Blood’ Ulmer (g); Bernie Worell, Amina Claudine Myers (org); Bill Laswell (b); Ziggy Modeliste (d)

A gathering of greats consider jazz, blues and gospel in the future positive. SN

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Terell Stafford: Centripetal Force

Composer(s):
  • Terell Stafford
Performer: 
Stafford (t, fl); John Clark (fh); Ron Blake (ts); Tim Warfield Jr (ts); Russell Malone (g); Stefon Harris (vib); Stephen Scott (p); Ed Howard (b); Victor Lewis (d); Daniel Moreno (perc)

Trumpeter Terell Stafford, lately featured with the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, is a name to watch. His writing and golden tone offer swinging proof that mainstream jazz is renewable and rewarding in young hands. GB

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Ornette Coleman and Joachim Káhn: Colors

Composer(s):
  • Ornette Coleman
Performer: 
Coleman (as, tpt, vn); Kühn (p)

‘A constant musical inspiration for forty years’ is how Leipzig-born pianist Joachim Kühn describes US saxophonist/composer Ornette Coleman. The American’s groundbreaking late-Fifties free-jazz recordings were crucial in encouraging Kühn, then in his mid-teens, to switch from classical to jazz studies, so the extraordinary sympathy he demonstrates for Coleman’s music throughout this superb live duo album is hardly unexpected.
 

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Classics from Hollywood to Broadway

Composer(s):
  • Robert Wright & George Forrest
Works: 
Songs by Robert Wright & George Forrest
Performer: 
Melanie Holliday, Steven Kimbrough, Frankfurt Radio Orchestra/Peter Falk

Classics from Hollywood to Broadway is a curiosity, a collection of songs by Robert Wright and George Forrest, all based on themes by classical composers. In 1936 these two young men, barely out of their teens, were working in the music department of MGM when they were sent for by the studio head and asked to create a new score for the studio’s biggest stars, Nelson Eddy and Jeanette Macdonald.
 

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Hutch Sings Cole Porter, Noel Coward and Others

Composer(s):
  • Cole Porter
  • Noel Coward and Others
Performer: 
Hutch (piano & vocals)

Also on the Conifer label we get the more familiar voice of Hutch with a set of standard numbers by Noël & Cole. Although it is becoming increasingly fashionable to batch these two composers together on disc and in cabaret in London and New York, I am less and less certain it makes much sense.
 

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Mandy Patinkin: Oscar & Steve

Composer(s):
  • Oscar Hammerstein II & Stephen Sondheim
Works: 
Songs of Oscar Hammerstein II & Stephen Sondheim
Performer: 
Mandy Patinkin, with Paul Ford (keyboards) and band/Eric Stern

In what is still a predominantly female industry, the actor Mandy Patinkin (best known as Dr Jeffrey Geiger in Chicago Hope) is also developing an intriguing new career in solo cabaret, one he brings to the Almeida Theatre in Islington, north London, this April.
 

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The Complete Sonny Rollins RCA Victor Recordings

Composer(s):
  • Sonny Rollins
Works: 
The Complete Sonny Rollins RCA Victor Recordings
Performer: 
Rollins, Coleman Hawkins (ts), etc

Rollins is one of the most self-searching of all the great improvisers, and there were at least three periods when he retired from public performance and recording in order to think again about his music. This handsome boxed set covering the years 1962-4 documents the results of his second such retreat, brought on in 1959 perhaps by the arrivals of both John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman with the more radical avant-garde.
 

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Don Braden: The Voice of the Saxophone

Composer(s):
  • Don Braden
  • Hank Mobley and Jimmy Heath
  • John Coltrane
  • Wayne Shorter
Performer: 
Don Braden (ts); Vincent Herring (as); Hamiet Blueitt (bs, c, bc), etc

Here’s an old head on young shoulders. Don Braden studied engineering at Harvard, but probably learnt his most important lessons at the Betty Carter finishing school for young jazzmen. Since then he has kept stellar company, cut seven albums of his own, and written for film and TV.
 
His experience and exuberance come together in this tastefully programmed big group outing. A tribute to tenor-playing composers, the album includes pearls from Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane, Hank Mobley and Jimmy Heath, plus two fine originals.
 

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