The three-disc anthology The Real…Miles Davis: The Ultimate Miles Davis Collection brings together tracks the legendary trumpeter recorded for Columbia during the '50s and '60s. These are some of Davis' best-known and most influential recordings when he was at the height of his pre-fusion, modern jazz career. Included are such cuts as "So What," "I Thought About You," "Stella by Starlight," "Milestones," and more.

An official CD recorded 13 February, 1996 at Warner Pacific College, Portland Oregon, USA "as part of (The Vinny Golia) Large Ensemble's 1996 West Coast tour. This disc contains the second set recorded in its entirety." This was released by the 9 Winds label.

An album that fuses the influence of African music, jazz-rock, and free improvisation, Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath shares affinities with the '70s music of Don Cherry and Miles Davis. Somewhat of a legendary album amongst collectors of British jazz and fusion, the LP was originally released in the '70s and in early 2002 finally became reissued by the Italian label Akarma. Enlisted on the session were the talents of a group of extraordinary musicians from the free jazz, progressive rock, and improvisation scenes. Chris McGregor led the group on piano and African xylophone with Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans on trombones, Mongezi Feza on pocket trumpet and Indian flute, Mark Charig on cornet, Harry Beckett on trumpet, and Dudu Pukwana on alto saxophone. Ronnie Beer's tenor saxophone is outstanding, and pitched up against Alan Skidmore's tenor and soprano saxophone, completing a massive horn section, are two bigger names: '70s U.K. jazzman Mike Osborne on alto saxophone and clarinet and John Surman on baritone and soprano saxophone.

Pianist Mal Waldron and soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy first recorded together in the late-'50s. Both spent most of the careers working and living in Europe, and this album was recorded in Germany. Both musicians mix a precise sense of angularity with deeply emotive poetics…

Carla Bley's tentet performs some of her most colorful themes on this often-humorous and generally stimulating set. "Jesus Maria and Other Spanish Strains" and the three-part "Musique Mecanique" are particularly memorable. This is the perfect setting for Bley's music, with such musicians as trumpeter Michael Mantler, Gary Windo on tenor and bass clarinet, trombonist Roswell Rudd and Bob Stewart on tuba making their presence felt.

Since the mid-2000s, British pianist, composer, Alexander Hawkins (Evan Parker, Chicago/London Underground) has become a force to be reckoned with, largely within Europe's exploratory progressive jazz and improvising circles. As a collaborator and solo artist, the pianist transmits a distinctive line of attack, where melody and free-form extrapolations enjoy a happy coexistence. On this studio set, he teams with notable performance artist, abstract vocalist and fellow Brit, Elaine Mitchener (Phil Minton, George Lewis) for a semi-structured set highlighted by the quartet's deconstruction of some standards and free-jazz sax icon Archie Shepp's, "Blasé."

We can always expect something new from Mr. McFerrin. Circlesongs is a recording of eight spontaneous vocal improvisations sung by twelve singers and Bobby. Three basses, three tenors, three altos and three sopranos create the vocal textures around which Bobby weaves his lilting solos. The songs are very like chant because of the repeating and rhythmic sounds which truly have a circular sound. Words are eschewed in favor of syllables of sound, a style McFerrin explains, "I've always felt that singing a song without words makes one song a thousand songs because the people who hear it can bring their own stories to it."

Sync might be envisioned as a modified sax/bass/drum trio, where the bassist has been replaced by Jerome Harris on either acoustic guitar or acoustic bass guitar, and where the drummer’s role is taken by Samir Chatterjee on tabla and dumbek. With Rothenberg moving among alto sax, clarinet, bass clarinet, and the Japanese shakuhachi and composing looping ribbons of melody with odd rhythmic contours, the trio has found a most palatable merger of jazz and Asian music. The uncommon instrumentation is enhanced by a shared sense of purpose that gives Sync its winning character. Each player displays both the techniques and the sensitivity required to function as both soloist and accompanist, allowing Sync to maintain its three-way conversations after Rothenberg has finished soloing. This is not simply a matter of the leader’s ability to sustain extended melodic and rhythmic variations at lower volumes through circular breathing; it also results from the assurance that allows Harris to sustain a pronounced rhythmic underpinning in his guitar work and rare melodic fluency on bass. Chatterjee, who can sing and then play back the most complex patterns in the manner of the great tabla masters, also senses how to highlight more compact, swing-oriented parts through shifts in accents and dynamics.

A stellar trio of free improvisers, each respective kings of the avant-garde jazz scene in different capacities. British improvisation legend Derek Bailey has played with practically every musician of note in the European improvised music community from the early '60s through to the end of the century and is arguably one of the single most important practitioners in the genre. John Zorn is similarly an extraordinarily influential figure in the American avant-garde music scene and William Parker is a leading solo performer and bandleader who carried free jazz through the late half of the century into new dimensions.

Eclats de Trois Temps requires some attention. Probably the best listener of a record like this will simply be the one who will be able to dispose listening curious but alert, without limiting the explorations that this work opens. Maybe it's trite to say, but it seems necessary to hope so when the Italian jazz scene presents an exit so rare, how precious.

Emil Karlsen's solo EP "Flux" is based around making the most out of the drum set in terms of extended techniques, timbre and textures - improvised. Inspired by his Norwegian background, this project is portrait of many years thinking compositionally and texturally about the drums, especially when put in a solo context. His main inspiration lie in the improvised music scene flourishing in the early 60's with names such as Cecil Taylor and Andrew Cyrille, but also classical composers such as John Cage and Igor Stravinsky. Challenging both the role of the drum set as well as the listener is the key aspects of this EP.

The association between Norwegian Drummer Paal Nilssen-Love and Chicago saxophonist Ken Vandermark has seemingly been one of continuously paring down boundaries and borders. As members of the band School Days, the two musicians have met up with equal parts Chicago and Norway in quartet/quintet settings to make the records Crossing Division (2000) and In Our Times (2002). Later Vandermark and Nilssen-Love formed the trio FME (2002) with bassist Nate McBride. Each cropping away of players took away more form and structured music.

This cd contains music in a contemporary jazz style. Spontaneously composed in a free flow of ideas resulting in a something new and something older from jazz history.