The Monterey Jazz Festival Records label will unveil a second collection of never-before-released concert recordings this summer, just before the 51st annual festival this fall.
Six new collections of Monterey Jazz Festival performances will be released on Aug. 5 by the MJFR label. Recordings include:
- Art Blakey and the Giants of Jazz-Live at the 1972 Monterey Jazz Festival
- Dave Brubeck-50 Years of Dave Brubeck: Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival, 1958-2007
- Shirley Horn-Live at the 1994 Monterey Jazz Festival
- Tito Puente & His Orchestra-Live at the 1977 Monterey Jazz Festival
- Cal Tjader (pictured)-The Best of Cal Tjader: Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival, 1958-1980
- Jimmy Witherspoon featuring Robben Ford-Live at the 1972 Monterey Jazz Festival
The collections highlight the best of the artists’ performances at an individual concert, or, in the cases of Brubeck and Tjader, multiple festival appearances.
In releasing the live recordings, MJFR reaches deep into the archives of jazz in the last 50 years, with hundreds of acclaimed jazz artists and more than 2,000 hours of concerts to choose from.
The label itself was founded in 2007 to commemorate the festival’s 50th anniversary, releasing a batch of live performance recordings to celebrate-the first time a festival had established its own label.
“I wanted to leverage the festival’s assets and use the 50th as a launching pad to make this historical music available to people,” said Tim Jackson, general manager of the Monterey Jazz Festival, in a press release.
Concert recordings released in 2007 include: Louis Armstrong & His All-Stars (1958), Miles Davis Quintet (1963), Thelonious Monk Quartet (1964), Dizzy Gillespie (1965) and Sarah Vaughan (1971).
That year, the label also made available a 50th anniversary collection of featured performances and historical highlights of the festival.
The Monterey Jazz Festival calls itself the longest running jazz festival in the world according to its Web site. This fall, the festival will take place from Sept. 19 through Sept. 21 on nine different stages at the Monterey Fairgrounds in Monterey, Calif., the same fairgrounds where the weekend of jazz music, culture and community has taken place for the past five decades.
Artists including Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Cassandra Wilson, Nancy Wilson, Christian McBride, Joshua Redman, and Kurt Elling will perform.
