February 2009

February 2009 Newsletter

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The Super Bowl has come and gone, and ejazzlines congratulates the Steelers and their many fans, as we do aspire to someday have a record similar to theirs. We are six Lombardi Trophies short of the champs, but we do hope to continue earning trophies in our chosen field of jazz. As always, we have dozens of new books, DVDs, charts and CDs to let everyone know about. We send a special thank you shout out to all of the educators, bandleaders, teachers, and individuals who continue their generosity towards our chart/arrangement selection, and we shall continue to make our offerings among the widest and most varied available anywhere.

Jazz Lines Publications is continuing to grow, and we have many new things which will be available in the coming months. We sincerely appreciate the response we have received from the first of our Duke Pearson charts, and we will continue to make more of these available. Duke's Make it Good is the very newest, just published this week. We are now up to 35 titles in our catalog, and we enthusiastically encourage everyone to check the listings and let us know what you think.

February's most exciting new items start with two DVDs celebrating the life of one of America's greatest musical figures, the legendary Quincy Jones, An Evening With Quincy Jones and Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones. We also have a live DVD celebrating the long career of one of the great groups of vocal jazz, Manhattan Transfer. The classic documentary Saxophone Colossus, featuring Sonny Rollins, was also just re-released. Our newest books include a brand new one from Hal Leonard which is a course of study on the music of Jim Hall. Alfred has also just released a book of songs from the ever-popular Diana Krall's From This Moment On CD.

New DVDs:
February's DVDs are another fine group, led by the aforementioned Quincy Jones items. These two DVDs provide very interesting looks at the man who has been at the forefront of everything from Dizzy Gillespie's bands of the 1950s to Frank Sinatra and Count Basie's work in the 1960s to Michael Jackson's chart-topping Off the Wall and Thriller albums. We also have a new DVD featuring Dorothy Donegan, a jazz pianist who surely should be more well-known. Gypsy Caravan is a very interesting film by the legendary Albert Maysles which captures, in documentary and performance footage, a wide variety of this wonderful genre of music. We also have a fantastic new 4 DVD series from Mel Bay which teaches Flamenco guitar to all levels of players. The re-issue of Sonny Rollins-Saxophone Colossus, the new Manhattan Transfer DVD, Meeting of the Minds: The Making of Floating Point by John McLaughlin, and others featuring Al Green, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, and India.Arie serve to further our continuing effort to offer a wide selection of the art of great musicians from different genres. Please also consider the classic World of Maynard Ferguson, which we have a handful of copies left of, and the Guitar Artistry of David Bromberg, which proved to be among January's most popular.

New CDs:
Absord in Japan has just re-issued some nice dates. The first one is by guitarist Barney Kessel titled Live at Sometime. This trio date, recorded in Tokyo, features 10 tunes including several classic standards. Pianist Harold Mabern recorded a fine date in 1978 with bassist Walter Bolden and drummer Jamil Nasser. Titled Pisces Calling, this date features 5 tunes. Also, there is re-release by pianist Walter Bishop, Jr. of a live recording he did in Paris in 1978. Bishop, Jr. performs 5 tunes including What Is This Thing Called Love, Speak No Evil, 'Round Midnight, and others. And, sticking with the pianists, the last re-issue is from bebop piano master Al Haig titled Portrait of Bud Powell Live. Similar to his release on the M&I label (Originally on Interplay), this date serves as a tribute to legendary pianist Bud Powell.

New Books:
February brings another crop of fine new books, led by the Step-by-Step Breakdown of the Style of Jim Hall. One of the living legends of jazz, Jim has been a leading player and educator for nearly half a century, and his style should be studied and absorbed by any serious jazz guitarist. The folks at Jamey Aebersold have just let us know about Ultra Smooth Jazz Grooves, and there are editions for alto and tenor sax. Hal Leonard continues their wide-ranging play-along series with their latest, Disney Favorites. Advance Music has just released a very interesting item from master player and educator David Liebman, who we are proud to call a friend. From Student to Jazz Artist is not a book, but a CD-ROM/MP3 of David conversing with students of his on a wide range of topics. We also have many more books ranging from various play-alongs to bass instruction to Flamenco guitar to the new one from Diana Krall. January had some very important new books, led by Chuck Sher's newest, the Real Easy Ear Training Book and the Jazz Singer's Guidebook, which, as is generally the case with Chuck's releases, are instant classic items which can help just about anyone interested in the topics covered. Berklee Jazz Piano joins these two to give January a trio of items which very few months can match.

New Release Summary:
In our tireless and exhaustion-inducing effort to scour the globe for the best and brightest products in jazz, as of this newsletter we have added a total of 17 new CDs for the month of February 2009 and 153 for the month of January 2009; 26 new DVDs for February 2009 and 21 for January 2009; 36 new music books for February 2009 and 45 for January 2009; 6 new big band and combo arrangements for the month of January 2009 and 65 for the month of January 2009.

In our DVD section, we now carry a truly amazing total of over 1,725 jazz DVDs! We have all of the live performance DVDs, the documentaries, the method DVDs, the personal master classes - we proudly offer a selection of jazz and jazz-related DVDs that is second to none.

If you haven't visited our Imports and Rarities section lately, please check it out. We are now stocking more and more obscure, rare, and hard-to-find titles from Japan and Europe, including many titles that you may not be able to find elsewhere.

Please keep in mind that many of our new releases are available in limited quantities. We do our best to predict demand and fill orders as quickly as possible, but we do run out of new releases. Even if we run out of stock, almost everything featured in this newsletter should be available to ship within 5-7 days; some imports may take 2-3 weeks.

We are Rob and Doug at ejazzlines and we thank everyone once again for your continued generosity and support - we truly appreciate it!