Alto saxophonist Greg Osby’s new Blue Note disc, St. Louis Shoes, smokes—buy it today—but we wanted to tip you off to another Osby disc that will soon be on store racks: Round and Round, a duo CD with pianist Marc Copland. The album will be out June 24 via Nagel-Heyer and its 57 minutes are filled with nine tracks (three Osby tunes, five Copland tunes and the Rainger/Robin standard “Easy Living”). Jim Anderson, jazz’s foremost minister of sound outside of Rudy van Gelder, recorded the disc at New York’s Avatar Studios in late November 2002. Simply put: the music is cozy and so is the CD’s sound.
In other Osby news, we found over 20 live performances by the man and his various bands at his Web site, gregosby.com—all free for the downloading in the trusted MP3 format. Lucky us, we were only at the site looking for Osby tour dates with Copland (none are scheduled, but both Osby and Copland are busy gigging separately—check www.bridgeboymusic.com/copland for Copland’s dates). The downloadable tracks on Osby’s site date from concerts held in 1998, ’99 and 2000, and most feature Jason Moran, one of our current favorites, on piano. Osby is also the cover model on our print edition this month, click hereto read an excerpt from the story.
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