Between the Beats

There are some records that are just so great that you have to listen to them again and again for weeks and weeks, and Avishai Cohen Trio’s “Gently Disturbed” is a perfect example.

Avishai Cohen, an Israeli, has a very impressive musical career. He has played with many great musicians, including Herbie Hancock, Bobby McFerrin and Roy Hargrove, and joined Chick Corea in several of his bands for a number of years.  Cohen was born in 1970 and originally learned to play the piano, but after listening to Jaco Pastorius was inspired to take up the bass guitar.  Since 1998, Cohen has released around ten albums and has taken part in numerous other musical projects.

From 2003 and onwards he started to concentrate more and more on his own music productions, and founded the Avishai Cohen Trio.  Along with the drummer Itamar Doari and the pianist Shai Maestro, he recorded several of his own records and played in concerts all over the world.

The album ‘Gently Disturbed’, released on his own label “Razdaz” in 2008, was created by this trio of musicians and is a real masterpiece. This record contains a great mixture of fusion, acoustic elements, oriental influences, wonderful arrangements and has a real spontaneity about it.  Quite quickly, it becomes obvious that these three gents have been playing together for a very long time - every sound suits, and they each know exactly what to do to blend perfectly with each other.  “Gently Disturbed” is an impressive and diversified album with Avishai Cohen being in top form.

Please click here if you want to listen to or buy this album.

Tags: Avishai Cohen Trio, Bass, Chick Corea, Gently Disturbed, Herbie Hancock, Jaco Pastorius, Razdaz Records

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From June 1-5, an exhibition of drawings and oil paintings of Miles Davis will be showcased at The Exchange Court Gallery in London.

In the early 80ies Miles Davis discovered his passion for art. His painting reflects his well documented fascination with and love of woman, together with evocations of African tribal art.  All the drawings shown in this exhibition are acquired from the private collection of Jo Gelbard, Miles Davis’ girlfriend during the last years of his life. Even famous artists like Prince, Phil Collins and Diana Ross are collectors of his work.

The date was chosen to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Miles Davis most famous and most successful album “Kind Of Blue”.

(The Exchange Court Gallery in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, London, WC2 OJU, UK, Tel: (44)020 7420 4300).

Tags: Jo Gelbard, London, Miles Davis, The Exchange Court Gallery

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From April 23rd - 26th, the International Jazz fair “jazzahead” will take place for the fourth year in a row in Bremen / Germany.

“jazzahead’s” motto is “start talking Jazz”, and they will be hosting live concerts, panel discussions, exhibitions and symposiums.

At the fair you can find alot of interesting exhibitors like the Jazz Festivals from Copenhagen and Glasgow, music labels as ACT, ECM, Enja or Naive, distributors like Edel or Warner, Universities for applied sciences, publishing houses, agencies, jazz associations and even legendary locations like London’s “Ronnie Scotts Club“.

The panel discussions which will take place on Friday and Saturday cover topics like the future of the (web)radio, new tools for regional marketing, the connection between tourism and cultural events, fusion of music marketing and many more. To participate in these discussions, the “jazzahead” has invited popular speakers, one such example being Claude Nobs, the founder of Montreux Jazz Festival!

In addition to the above, there are many concerts that shouldn’t be missed. Great artists like John Abercrombie, Norma Winstone, Adam Nussbaum, the NDR Bigband and Fredrika Stahl will be performing.

Between The Beats will be there. Check this space for more news on “jazzahead” and feedback on our experiences.

Tags: Bremen, Claude Nobs, ECM, jazzahead, John Abercrombie, panel discussions, Ronnie Scotts Club

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Are you familiar with the feeling of searching desperately for detailed information and full discographies on certain artists, records or labels on the internet? For example, other than his own, what productions has Wayne Shorter been involved in? The music database ‘Discogs‘ is the perfect solution for this!

Discogs was created in 2000. It’s original purpose was to be a personal database for its owner, Kevin Lewandowski, to list his own private record collection. After receiving lots of very positive feedback, it quickly became clear that he should share this website and allow public access. Now anyone can register easily and free of charge and there are lots of useful options.

Firstly, you can create your own profile with your personal collection and wantlist. If you notice that one of your records is missing from the Discogs database, you can submit it yourself and so the database grows continuously throught the activity of its members. The submissions are monitored by a few people who have voting permissions.

Secondly, for the last four years Discogs has offered the possibility to buy and sell records. It can be much easier than sites like Ebay - rather than bidding process, you choose your price and list it until someone buys at that price. You pay a small fee of around 5% to Discogs for every item you sell. Discogs sends out a daily, personalised newsletter which shows all items for sale that appear on your wantlist. Personally, I have always had very good experiences using this. The sellers have all been friendly and reliable and the records have arrived in the condition specified.

Thirdly, Discogs gives you the opportunity to do alot of research on artists. Let’s keep Wayne Shorter as our example. As well as a detailed list of all of his records including release dates, you can find alot of other artist’s records in which he participated, which he might have produced or compilations on which he appears.

At first, Discogs was a database purely for electronic music like House and Techno, but it has evolved over the years through the growing number of memberships, registrations and visitors (currently around 200 000 per day!). And now you can also find good selections of other genres such as Jazz, Blues, World Music and Pop. Right now, over 1.7 million recording mediums are listed!

Finally, there is the Discogs forum, which is called ‘Groups’ on Discogs. Here, you can contact other users, ask questions, get track identifications and discuss alot of different topics. One very special thread, for example, is a collection of alot of cities around the globe with a list of all record stores for each city with address and genre (International Record Store Index).

Tags: Discogs, Ebay, forum, Kevin Lewandowski, music database, recording mediums, Wayne Shorter

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Tags: digital age, handpicked music, MySpace, record companies, Twitter, UK music industry

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The last round of our weekly prize draw is totally “spaced out”. It is the last chance to win a CD, if you subscribe to our newsletter this week. Among all new subscribers we will give away 5 copies of the wonderful compilation “Psychedelic Jazz- The best mindblowing spaced out Jazz Grooves”, all in the spirit of the legendary Sun Ra’s quote: “Space is the Place“.

Tags: Dorothy Ashby, Impulse!, Ornette Coleman, Roy Ayers, Sun Ra, Universal Jazz, Verve, Volker Kriegel

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The winners for last week’s prize draw, the Cal Tjader CD on Verve Records, were just drawn. The five lucky ones, who won the CD, were notified by e-mail.

Enjoy the Blog.

Tags: Between the Beats, Cal Tjader, prize draw

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The CD “Soulful Vibes”, that we will give away this week, gives an overview of Cal’s “Verve” years between 1963 and 1967. Together with Chick Corea or Lalo Schifrin for example, you can listen to Cal Tjader’s tight band at their best. You will find everything from uptempo to ballads, that make you forget the grey wintertime. “Soulful Vibes” is a must for fans of Latin Jazz!

Tags: Cal Tjader, Latin Jazz, Mambo, Newsletter, Stan Getz, Tito Puente, Verve Records

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The winners for this week’s prize draw were just drawn. The five lucky ones, who won the CD compilation “Talkin’ Jazz” featuring the MPS Label,  were notified by e-mail.

Enjoy the Blog.

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MPS stands for Musik Produktion Schwarzwald (Music Production Black Forest) and had its headquarters in Villingen, a small town in the beautiful Black Forest in the southwest of Germany.

It was founded in 1968 by Jazz-Lover Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer and very quickly became one of the most influential Jazz Labels in the 70s and 80s worldwide. In the beginning, there was a clear focus on German and European artists, but very soon top stars like George Duke or Oscar Peterson published records on MPS. What artists most enjoyed about working with MPS, was the no-boundary approach. It was a time when commercial reasons were important, but not the all-determining issue in the music industry.

The compilation, that we will give away this week among all new newsletter registrations, gives a very good overview of MPS’ multi-style approach. You  can listen to Ella Fitzgerald, Dave Pike or Monty Alexander for example. 

So, quickly register and good luck for the draw!

Tags: album features, Dave Pike, Ella Fitzgerald, Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer, Jazz, Monty Alexander, MPS, Musik Produktion Schwarzwald, Newsletter, Talkin´ Jazz

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