December 2008

December 2008 Holiday Newsletter

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Our last email newsletter of 2008 is here, and we cannot believe that another year is already coming to a close. 2008 has been our best year to date, and we once again send our most sincere gratitude to the individuals, bandleaders, students, teachers, professors, librarians, writers, collectors, schools, stores, and everyone out there who has been so generous with us. We continue to work very hard to provide the best one-stop source for arrangements, theory/method books, sheet music/transcription collections, DVDs and CDs, and we promise to continue this effort in 2009 and far into the future. Jazz Lines Publications finishes its first year with a 30 chart library of which we are tremendously proud. We have many new and exciting songs in the works for next year to add to our classics by Sinatra, Ella, Basie, Nat King Cole and the rest of our all-star lineup, and we will keep everyone updated on a regular basis. We also will be attending more conferences and conventions in 2009, so while we will surely miss seeing the great many of you we are used to thanking in person at IAJE every January, we will hopefully see many of you somewhere in the coming months.

Holiday shopping: We do have a great many wonderful gift ideas, and we would like to point out some of the best which we have in stock for immediate shipping, all at a discount from normal retail prices. Once again, we mention what we feel is the very best jazz gift imaginable, the timeless and classic Jazz Icons series of DVDs. We have all 23 of the DVDs in stock at great prices, as well as all three box sets. We have two excellent masterclass DVD series available, the nine volume NYU series, and the first two from the new Roberto's Winds series, featuring Dave Liebman and Joe Lovano. These masterclass DVDs all include live performances and lectures from many of the greatest musicians working today. The new play-along CDs to accompany the Real Book, Volume 1, have been extremely well-received, and are a long-needed idea which we are very glad to see come to fruition. We always have the Rhapsody Films titles in stock and ready to go, and these are some of the best jazz films in existence. Finally, we also suggest checking out our clearance page. We have added many dozens of new books and CDs to these pages and everything is available in very limited quantities; some of the items will be permanently deleted from our offerings when the last copy sells.

December's newest items feature a new biography of legendary guitarist Barney Kessel, whose career included working with Charlie Parker, Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, Buddy Rich, and many of jazz's biggest stars. We are also featuring a new book dedicated to breaking down the sound of one of the great alto sax players of all-time, Paul Desmond. There are three new Christmas books featuring the holiday music of Frank Sinatra as well. The first DVD from rising vocal star Sophie Milman is also now available, recorded live at the Montreal Jazz Festival, and we also have a very interesting new Gypsy Jazz Odyssey DVD. We will add more new items on a daily basis as they become available.

ejazzlines holiday schedule: We will be taking our annual holiday vacation from Monday December 22 through Friday December 26. We will be doing no shipping during this week, and our office will be closed. We will be open until 5 PM eastern time Friday December 19, and will re-open at 8 AM eastern time Monday December 29. We respectfully ask everyone to please be aware of this closure of ours. As always, we will be available via email during the vacation, but possibly not at our usual very quick response time. Should anyone have a problem that needs immediate attention when we are closed, we will do our very best to reply via email within 2448 hours. We thank everyone in advance for your understanding.

New DVDs:

December's newest feature the above-mentioned DVD from vocalist Sophie Milman as well as Gypsy Jazz Odyssey, which follows Swing Gitan, Chicago's top Gypsy Jazz band, on their travels from the US to France in many different settings. We also have Easy Steps to Bossa Nova guitar, an excellent lesson for adding some Brazilian flavor to any guitarist's repertoire. Jobim, Gilberto and others have had a gigantic influence on jazz, and this DVD will help add some Brazilian style to your sound as well. We have several others, including another interesting selection of guitar instructional items and a brand new Sam and Dave retrospective, and please check the new release pages frequently, as more will be added as they are released. We would like to also mention November's many highlights, led by the Masterclass DVDs from David Liebman and Joe Lovano, and the historic live pairing of Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis Live. In addition, there are recent live releases from Sonny Rollins, Chick Corea, The Crusaders, David Murray, Sheryl Bailey, Tommy Emmanuel, and Bob Cooper. As always, the last two months also have quite a few educational DVDs, featuring Sher Music's first DVD release, Michael Spiro's Introduction to the Conga Drum.

New Books:

December's books feature the aforementioned Barney Kessel biography and Paul Desmond instructional book, and we have many more as well. We have two new vocal play/sing-along books, one featuring the music of Nat King Cole, and one containing many Big Band Standards. We also have new piano books focusing on the works of Dave Brubeck, Rodgers & Hart and the Gershwins. The second edition of The Self-Promoting Musician has just been released, and it is an excellent guide to the business side of a music career for players of any genre. In addition to the new Sinatra Christmas books, please check November's pages for quite a few more recently released holiday-themed books. November's highlight was surely the release of the first play-along CDs for Hal Leonard's Real Books. We have all four of these 3-CD sets, each of which contain a rhythm section playing backing tracks for 60 of the tunes in the Real Book, Volume 1, as well as a specially-priced set of all four. The Real Christmas Book is another excellent new idea, and we recommend this guaranteed-to-be-annually-useful item very highly. The highlights of the last 6 weeks or so are rounded out by the Best of Sonny Rollins, Jamey Aebersold's new Christmas Carols Classics play-along, Mel Bay's Stephane Grappelli Gypsy Jazz Violin, and Volume 2 of Alfred's Sittin' in With the Big Band play-along series.

New Big Band Arrangements:

Our newest Jazz Lines chart is Billie Holiday's famous recording with Artie Shaw Any Old Time. Recorded in 1938 (and then later on with Helen Forrest on vocals), this is a nice clarinet feature in addition to a vocal chart. The arrangement (by Jerry Gray) begins in F for a chorus and then modulates to C for the vocal part. The chart then goes to Ab for the last section. This is not really a demanding chart but does call for a technically proficient clarinetist. Shaw's clarinet parts are written out in full (on Alto 1) as well as the 8-bar tenor solo. Chord changes have been provided in the event that the players would rather improvise. This chart was originally written for 3 trumpets and 2 trombones, but it has been adapted for a 8 brass. Our most recent releases include: Count Basie's Jingle Bells, a raucous chart that has been featured on many holiday compilations, and Mele Kalikimaka, Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters' hit record in 1949. If you're planning for a New Year's eve performance, you may want to consider Guy Lombardo's classic Auld Lang Syne or What Are You Doing New Year's Eve.

New CDs:

There are several new SteepleChase CDs worth mentioning including two new jam session volumes. VOlume 27 features Andy LaVerne, David Finck, Charlie Pillow, Tim Ries, Jaz Sawyers, and Danny Walsh. Volume 28 features Rich Perry, Steve LaSpina, Conrad Herwig, Steve Davis, Matt Wilson, and Andy LaVerne. Also Eric Rasmussen continues on with his Tristano tribute albums with School of Tristano 3 featuring guitarist Nate Radley, bassist Dave Ambrosio, and drummer Matt Wilson. Featured are 11 tunes including several Tristano compositions.

New Release Summary:
In our effort to present everything that we think you may like, as of this newsletter we have added a total of 112 new CDs for the month December 2008 and 132 for the month of November 2008; 9 new DVDs for December 2008 and 48 for November 2008; 26 new music books for December 2008 and 87 for November 2008; 6 new big band and combo arrangements for the month of December 2008 and 27 for the month of November 2008.

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.

In our DVD section, we now carry over 1,725 jazz DVDs!

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.

As the holidays approach, we again take the opportunity to thank all of you from the over 85 countries our products have shipped to, for helping us to grow and for showing us the right path to make you happy. We vow to continue our efforts to offer the best selection and one-stop source for jazz and related styles of recordings, DVDs, charts, and educational materials. We are always here for all of you and we truly appreciate all of the support we continue to receive. Please accept our continued gratitude for your support, and please let us know anytime what we are doing right and what we need to improve.

We are Rob and Doug at ejazzlines and we send our warmest holiday greetings to our thousands of customers across the globe. We truly appreciate each and every one of you.