Blue Note has announced the first installment in the Blue Note Review, a “stunning new biannual, limited-edition, luxury box set subscription series,” according to an official press release. Limited to 1,500 sets, the collectible box runs $200 and is now (and only) available to order at bluenotereview.com.
Each volume in the series will include a collection of new music from the label’s current artists, and this music will not be sold separately or available via download or streaming sites. The boxes will also feature an archival recording, or, as the release puts it, “a timeless treasure from the Blue Note vaults.”
“The digital transformation of the music business has made great strides in terms of convenience, but we’ve lost so much along the way,” says Don Was, the label’s president and the publisher of the Review. “For so many of us, Blue Note has always represented a particular sensibility and a culture of cool. Blue Note Review is our great effort to restore some of that culture, and to recreate that tangible, multisensory experience.”
The contents of Volume One, per the label’s official press release:
*A two-LP, 180-gram vinyl double-album (a two-CD set is also included) of new and previously unreleased recordings by current label artists including the Wayne Shorter Quartet, Charles Lloyd & the Marvels, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Gregory Porter, Kandace Springs, Terence Blanchard, Derrick Hodge and the Blue Note All-Stars featuring Ambrose Akinmusire, Robert Glasper, Hodge, Lionel Loueke, Kendrick Scott and Marcus Strickland
*A 180-gram vinyl reissue of the previously out-of-print rare classic catalog album Step Lightly by trumpeter Blue Mitchell, recorded in 1963 with Joe Henderson, Leo Wright, Herbie Hancock, Gene Taylor and Roy Brooks, and featuring liner notes by Michael Cuscuna
*Two never-before-released Francis Wolff 12×12 lithographs of Wayne Shorter and Stanley Turrentine
*An exclusive John Varvatos-designed Blue Note scarf
*A “Jazz Is Not a Crime” turntable mat conceived by Ryan Adams
*A lifestyle zine featuring a fascinating collection of articles and musings including a foreword by spiritual teacher and author Ram Dass, a poem by Jack Grapes, a conversation between Wayne Shorter and actor/comedian/jazz fanatic Jeff Garlin, an eloquent elegy for the late drummer Billy Higgins written by Charles Lloyd and a true-to-life comic drawn by Keith Henry Brown about an encounter between Stanley Turrentine and Blue Note founder Alfred Lion, as told by Bobby Hutcherson
Read a column by Nate Chinen on the revived label
Editor Evan Haga reviews a live show by a supergroup celebrating the label’s 75th anniversary
Check out info on the 2018 Blue Note at Sea cruise
Originally Published
