Monrom Matt - Matt Monro - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Some of Tchaikovsky's most famous works came from his ballets. This recording features performances of his most popular ballet works including Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty by the brilliant Evegeni Svetlanov conducting the USSR State Symphony Orchestra.

The smooth crooner gently swings the standards featuring the Mason Embry Trio and the Jeff Steinberg Orchestra. Every once in a while there comes along a singer who reminds you of something familiar yet something so new that it leaves you smiling; a young crooner's voice that wraps around you like a warm coat on a cold winters day. Matt Belsante is that rare kind of artist who has something new to offer.

Among the most intense and fascinating recording sessions of Thelonious Monk's career, Monk's Music surrounds the pianist/composer with his early boss Coleman Hawkins, his ideal drummer Art Blakey, two younger musicians who had worked with him productively earlier in the Fifties (Ray Copeland and Gigi Gryce), and another pair that would soon make history as part of his legendary Five Spot quartet (John Coltrane and Wilbur Ware). The program includes early Monk classics and the thorny new Crepuscule with Nellie, extended blowing performances and a brief opening horn fanfare, the sum of which equals an album where even the rough edges confirm the combustible atmosphere generated when jazz's best worked under the direction of the music's supreme individualist.