The Mills Blue Rhythm Band was an American big band active during the 1930s.
This 1956 recording based on George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess was the second "complete" recording of the opera after the 1951 version, and the first recording of the work to feature jazz singers and musicians instead of operatic singers and a classical orchestra.
James Dillon is a Scottish composer who is often regarded as belonging to the New Complexity school. Dillon studied art and design, linguistics, piano, acoustics, Indian rhythm, mathematics and computer music, but is self-taught in composition.
Escalator over the Hill is mostly referred to as a jazz opera, but it was released as a "chronotransduction", with "words by Paul Haines, adaptation and music by Carla Bley, production and coordination by Michael Mantler", performed by the Jazz Composer's Orchestra.
Pehr Henrik Nordgren was a Finnish composer.
Polka is a music and dance style that originated in Bohemia in the 1830s and came to American society with immigrants from Europe. A fast style in 2
4 time, and often associated with the pre–World War II era, polka remains a dynamic niche music in America.
Opening Night is a big band jazz recording of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra playing at the Village Vanguard club in New York City in February 1966. This was the first performance of the group at this club although the recording was not released until 2000. A 50-year tradition for Monday nights at the Village Vanguard began from this first evening for the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra which later became the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra and eventually the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. Resonance Records released what they term an "official release", approved by the Jones and Lewis estates, in 2016.
Rebecca Saunders is a London-born composer who lives and works freelance in Berlin. In a 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000, Saunders' compositions received the third highest total number of votes (30), surpassed only by the works of Georg Friedrich Haas (49) and Simon Steen-Andersen (35). In 2019, writers of The Guardian ranked Skin (2016) the 16th greatest work of art music since 2000, with Tom Service writing that "Saunders burrows into the interior world of the instruments, and inside the grain of Fraser's voice [...] and finds a revelatory world of heightened feeling."
Frank Sinatra's Greatest Hits! is the first compilation by American singer Frank Sinatra released on his own Reprise Records. It concentrates on mostly single releases from the mid to late 1960s, which fluctuates between adult contemporary pop and jazzy swing. The album opens up with Sinatra's recent number one hit "Strangers in the Night" and continues through the varied styles of music Sinatra recorded in the 60s, from easy listening ballads like "It Was a Very Good Year" and "Softly, as I Leave You" to contemporary pop like "When Somebody Loves You" and "That's Life". Greatest Hits was a modest hit, peaking at #55 on the album charts in late 1968. A second volume was issued in 1972, Frank Sinatra's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2. Both albums have since been supplanted with newer and more cohesive compilations.
Gone Polka is an album by Jimmy Sturr, released through Rounder Records on September 25, 2001. In 2002, the album won Sturr the Grammy Award for Best Polka Album.
Hiroyuki Yamamoto is a contemporary Japanese composer.
Super Hits is a greatest hits album from Miles Davis. Released in 2001, it reached #22 on Billboard's Jazz Albums chart.
Marcel Wengler is a Luxembourg composer and conductor. From 1972–1997, he headed the Conservatoire de Luxembourg. Since 2000, he has been director of the Luxembourg Music Information Centre. His compositions include symphonies, concertos, chamber music and musicals.
The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz is a six-LP box set released in 1973 by the Smithsonian Institution. Compiled by jazz critic, scholar, and historian Martin Williams, the album included tracks from over a dozen record labels spanning several decades and genres of American jazz, from ragtime and big band to post-bop and free jazz.
Larry Chesky, born Lawrence J. Ciszewski, was an American accordion player, Polka band leader, inductee in the International Polka Hall of Fame, and manager of the Rex Records label.
Malika Kishino is a Japanese composer based in Cologne, Germany.
Orchestre National de Jazz is a French orchestra that was created by French Ministry of Culture in 1986. It has had 12 musical and artistic directors, more than 200 soloists and recorded 33 albums. Orchestre National de Jazz won the Victoires du Jazz in 2009 and 2020, and was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2012 for the album Shut Up And Dance composed by John Hollenbeck.
The Beach Boys with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is a 2018 album of remixed Beach Boys recordings with new orchestral arrangements performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. It was produced by Nick Patrick and Don Reedman, who conducted similar projects for Roy Orbison and Elvis Presley.
