March Update Newsletter

ejazzlines' first trip to a Music Education's Eastern Division Conference in Providence, RI last week was thoroughly enjoyable. We met many folks who have been generous enough to purchase a lot of music from us, and we also were able to speak to a great many professors, teachers, musicians, and students from all over the eastern United States. This conference was a great experience, and we were surrounded by music and music enthusiasts for three really cool days. We were especially pleased to meet a lot of folks from military bands. One of the many surprises in our eight years of business has been the sheer number of great musicians and bands in the armed forces all over the world who we have come to know. We certainly knew that the military is full of music, but the amount of Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine bands who have become loyal and generous customers has been a wonderful revelation. We are proud to call bands located from Pearl Harbor to the Seventh Fleet and just about everywhere in between our customers, and we were very glad to be able to speak to many of you at the MENC Conference. The city of Providence was also an excellent experience. We walked and taxied through a good portion of the downtown and college areas, and really enjoyed the sights, sounds, and fine restaurants. ejazzlines is going to make every effort to attend more and more conferences, and we always do our best to get out and about, and become familiar with the culture of every great city that we visit. In the next year, we plan to attend conferences from nearby in Albany to San Diego, and hopefully in Europe as well. Traveling in this manner allows us not only to meet many of you, but also to get a feel for many great cities and regions. This certainly helps us to better understand the very many and diverse areas and people who we aspire to serve very well, and to augment and tailor our offerings to try and do even better.

Jazz Lines Publications' newest release is Duke Pearson's big band arrangement of his classic song Cristo Redentor. As with all of Duke's arrangements that we are publishing and will continue to make available, we have obtained the original manuscript from Duke's son Anthony. Working with Anthony has been a truly humbling pleasure. We are huge fans of Dukes, and as serious amateur jazz historians, we really appreciate having this kind of connection with the family of one of the great names of jazz's hugely fertile period of the 1950s and 1960s. Duke was a Blue Note mainstay who contributed a series of great albums throughout the 1960s, and his arranging and composing is appreciated by musicians in all genres of jazz. Duke was moved to compose Cristo Redentor during a trip to Brazil with Nancy Wilson in the early 1960s. Publishing Cristo Redentor has motivated us to create a new section of our site, which will be developed over the next couple of months with the goal of it being fully realized long before the holidays. It will focus on religious-themed music and will be called the Worship section. This chart is the very first to be listed there, and we plan to move many of our holiday charts into this section, and also to add more charts which celebrate different faiths. We will be moving the many praise and worship-themed theory, method, songbooks, and play-alongs which we offer to a soon-to-be created Worship Books section, to make them easier to find for our many customers who focus on these types of items.

For those of you who like to keep up with new jazz releases, below are some items that you may wish to know about.

We once again thank everyone for your support - it is sincerely appreciated every day of the year!

Doug and Rob at ejazzlines.

March's latest are proudly led off by the latest live DVD from one of the true favorites of ejazzlines' wonderful customers. Yes, the great Maynard Ferguson and his Big Bop Nouveau Band are featured in a brand new live DVD, filmed at Seattle's King Cat Theater in 2004. An hour long and with Dolby surround sound and stereo mixes, this is sure to be a true treat for the legions of fans of one of jazz's all-time great trumpeters and showmen. We also just added two Michel Petrucciani DVDs to our site. Each one has a live performance and a documentary, and between the two of them, they offer a vivid portrait of this outstanding and most unique of jazz pianists. The one which was just released, Concert Solo/Lettre a Michel Petrucciani, features Michel in concert, and also in a documentary which chronicles his arrival in America and the launching of his career. Astor Piazzolla in Portrait presents an in-depth look at Argentina's legendary King of the Tango. With live performances filmed over a 30-year period, studio performances, interviews, and other musicians' commentary, this may be the most complete, informative, and insightful film ever made on this towering figure of Latin music. We also have Robbie Williams Live at the Albert, a well-reviewed performance form the international star. In addition, in our ever-increasing commitment to jazz's sister the blues, we have new live DVDs from B.B. King, Albert Collins, John Mayall, and Long John Baldry, as well as blues instructional DVDs from Johnny Winter and others. The portrait, documentary, and masterlcass DVD from Gerry Mulligan, The Age of Steam, is in stock again after an unfortunately long time of being temporarily unavailable. We also have many other recent new DVDs in stock, including legendary pianist and educator Kenny Werner's newest, Living Effortless Mastery, the live DVD Freddie Hubbard One of a Kind, Wayne Shorter Live at Montreux, David Sanborn Live at Montreux, Fourplay Live in Cape Town, the Modern Drummer Festival 2008, and Jim Chapin's drum instructional DVD, Power, Speed, Control, Endurance.

New Books:

March's mid-month releases include a great new book of Duke Ellington songs, expertly arranged for solo piano. We also just added two Music Minus One play-alongs featuring Boots Randolph, a fantastic sax player who easily crossed over from country to jazz to rock and roll, and was a master of them all. Rhythm Guitar Essentials and How to Play Rhythm Guitar are books which present a variety of lessons to aid all guitarists in improving their rhythm playing. Broadway Favorites, Easygoing R&B, Favorite Standards, and More Standards (for women), and Jazz Cabaret Songs (for men) continue the line of highly useful and popular vocal play-alongs which we carry. Creating Artistry Through Choral Excellence is a book/CD ROM pack from highly respected educator Dr. Henry Leck which aspires to help teachers guide vocal students through all levels of education and performance. Flamenco master Juan Martin's La Guitarra Flamenca continues his output of fine products with a series of lessons presented in a book and 2 DVD set. Majoring in Music gives great advice to all college and conservatory level music students. We also enthusiastically remind everyone of some of the month's earlier highlights, which featured the brand new Real Book Volume 1, C edition, on CD ROM for the first time. We also highly recommend Mel Bay's two new books which accompany their popular Jazz Piano Voicing Concepts - Jazz Piano Solo Concepts and Jazz Piano Improvisation Concepts.

New Big Band Arrangements:

We have 3 new Jazz Lines charts to mention this time around including the release of Frank Sinatra's classic recording of Anything Goes. Nelson Riddle's famous arrangement of Anything Goes from Sinatra's classic record 'Song for Swingin' Lovers,' recorded in 1956, opens with the guitar playing a little syncopated figure and alto 1 on flute. Trombones are on cup mutes for the vocal entrance. Unlike other Riddle/Sinatra charts from this period, there isn't any instrumental section in this arrangement - there are vocals throughout. This isn't really that difficult of an arrangement, but just a really great showcase for your male vocalist. We also just came out with Neal Hefti's famous Flight of the Foo Birds from the original manuscript. This well-known Basie tune, featured on Atomic Basie, had previously been published as a transcription. But, we have obtained the original manuscript and produced this publication exactly as it was recorded. Continuing in our Duke Pearson series, we have just published his devotional arrangement Cristo Redentor. Duke Pearson toured with singer Nancy Wilson in 1961, at which time he traveled to Brazil. During his visit there he was inspired to pen one of his best-known pieces, Cristo Redentor. This became one of Pearson's best-known singles and was featured on his 'How Insensitive' album with voices. Pearson created this big band adaptation of the song. This is a very simple, but haunting ballad. And, in our new line of Charlie Parker with Strings arrangements we have published the famous Jimmy Carroll arrangement of Just Friends. This great arrangement was Charlie Parker's best-selling single and his own personal favorite recording. We have used the original manuscript as a basis for this publication, though, we did transcribe Charlie Parker's part and the piano solo and they are presented here as-played. But, in a separate alto sax staff we indicated what was written for Parker so that your alto player has a choice in what to play. In addition, we have included alternate parts in the event that you don't have access to string players. The alternate parts are indicated below. We have marked this as difficult due to the demands of the alto part (assuming it is performed as Parker played it). But, other than that it is not a difficult arrangement. Chord changes have been supplied for the alto and the piano solos. Additionally, we have John Clayton's arrangement of Raincheck, Glenn Miller's Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, Benny Goodman's Swingin' Down the Lane, and John Fedchock's Touch and Go.

New Release Summary:
In our exhaustive, round-the-clock efforts to present the best selection possible of jazz and jazz-related items, as of this newsletter we have added a total of 115 new CDs for the month of March 2009 and 153 for the month of February 2009; 51 new DVDs for March 2009 and 46 for February 2009; 48 new music books for March 2009 and 71 for February 2009; 25 new big band and combo arrangements for the month of March 2009 and 9 for the month of February 2009.

In our DVD section, we now carry a constantly growing and diversifying selection of over 1,900 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 CD section lately, please check it out. We are now stocking more and more obscure, rare, and hard-to-find titles from Japan, 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.