Two of the most important jazz labels of the 1970s and '80s, Black Saint and Soul Note, are going digital via eMusic.
The complete catalogs - that's about 580 albums - are now available on the site and include an editorial guide with commentary from Kevin Whitehead, Steve Smith, Dylan Hicks and Peter Margasak. 
Jazz fan Giacomo Pelliciotti established the labels in Italy in 1975 and chronicled the emerging avant garde artists. Over the course of 30 years, with Giovanni Bonandrini at the helm, the two labels defined an era that was overlooked but eventually fed artists into the mainstream.
Sure it's an opinion, but it feels like every great David Murray album was made for the labels.
I treasured the label's packaging back in the day, the sound quality and the fact that it represented something new and vital for music that was lost.
My personal top 10 from the catalog (and yes, I realize this very heavy on Charlie Haden):

Muhal Richard Abrams Orchestra - Blu Blu Blu
Paul Bley - Memoirs
Anthony Braxton - Six Monk's Compositions
Sonny Clark Memorial Quartet - Voodoo
Charlie Haden/Paul Motian featuring Gerri Allen - Etudes
David Murray - Ming
Sun Ra - Reflections in Blue
Old and New Dreams
Old and New Dreams - Tribute to Blackwell
Don Pullen - The Sixth Sense

The great jazz and blues reissue label Mosaic is re-entering the vinyl business after releasing only one LP title since 2000 - the 1957 Carnegie Hall concert by the Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane that was issued in 2005.
And they're already talking "Lucky Thompson Meets Oscar Pettiford," one of my absolute favorite jazz albums ever.
Label head Michael Cuscuna explains the HQ Vinyl Series that will be launched early next year.
"Vinyl has become a media story with large chains selling reasonably-priced turntables to 20-somethings and major labels judiciously releasing old and new titles. And of course, the audiophile labels are still plugging away with 'I-told-you-so' Cheshire cat smiles on their faces.
While preparing the Ahmad Jamal CD box set due next spring, it occurred to us that an eight-CD set doesn't have to give birth to a back-busting box of 12 180-gram LPs; it can also give birth to a double-album reissue of both LPs of Ahmad Jamal at the Pershing, the groundbreaking albums that generated such influential hits as 'Poinciana.'
Freed from thinking that Mosaic LPs have to mirror out large CD sets, we've engaged in a treasure hunt coming up with new title ideas like reissuing those two magnificent Lucky Thompson-Oscar Pettiford albums on ABC-Paramount or Duke Ellington's 1963 masterpiece 'Afro Bossa.' How about the complete Thelonious Monk 'Live At The It Club' on LP for the first time, beautifully remixed from the original three-track masters? We've only just begun."

On Thursday, trumpeter Nicholas Payton will celebrate the influence of bebop greats Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker on the paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Payton, a New Orleans native who still resides there, had just returned from a few shows in Brazil when he learned about the parameters of the gig. He’s not familiar with Basquiat works at the museum, but he has been profoundly influenced by visual art in recent years.
“When you play what you see,” he says, “it comes from a different place than when you play based on what you hear. My last two records have been very visual — I’m dealing with colors rather than notes, treating harmony as a color. My music is more rhythmic, more effervescent. There are lines and circles.”
It sounds tailor-made for Basquiat, whose work in his short lifetime was defined by its lines, energy and color – and its kinship with jazz. Payton, who made his first solo album in 1994 and last year gave some impressive performances in support of his “Into the Blue,” album, talked about Picasso, politics and potential.
Even before I was able to get out a full question, Payton chimed in with thoughts on art and how musicians have channeled art as an inspiration.
“You have trick yourself to not be so theoretical, tap ways to get to other places. It’s cool to be in that environment — playing to what you’re seeing.”
The  Q&A is after the jump.

It's always a treat when an artist sends you back into the library to pull out old vinyl or CDs that you have not thought about for awhile. Kurt Elling, the jazz singer, and the saxophonist Ernie Watts are touring with a tribute to "John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman," the album of duets they recorded on March 7, 1963. The album  is one of those distinctly beautiful and romantic albums that any jazz fan would hold onto it with a hope to someday share it; it's jazz at its most sensual and inviting.
Hartman's baritone, Trane's tenor sax and McCoy Tyner's supple piano take the album's six ballads at a relaxed pace, each note articulated with warmth and belying the fact that there was little, if any, rehearsal for the work. It reflected Coltrane's mood at the time, his most recent recordings being the equally sensitive "Ballads" and his collaboration with Duke Ellington. (Their "Prelude to a Kiss" still sends shivers).
Elling and Watts, whose best known work has been with Charlie Haden's Quartet West, add a string quartet and take their program into more upbeat terrain. Thursday at USC's Bing Theater, "Coltrane and Hartman" was a starting point - two of the album's cuts, "Lush Life" and "Autumn Serenade," went into a medley with "What's New" and  "My One and Only Love" was partnered "Nancy (With the Laughing  Face)." The emphasis was Coltrane, with Elling using his voice in the styles of both Hartman and Trane. He connected in the baritone with the singer, using flourishes, some of them wordless, to channel a Coltrane improvisation.
Watts has a tone substantially  different from Coltrane. Trane's playing at the time was moans, caresses and hallelujahs; Watts opts for pleas, promises and linear thought. Pianist Laurence Hobgood, who has been with Elling for 15 years, combined Tyner's romanticism with some of Bill Evans'' pensiveness in addition to writing the arrangements for the evening.
There are no plans at this time to record the program, which also includes Coltrane versions of "Bessie's Blues," "All of Nothing at All and "Say It (Over and Over Again)."   Elling, who now records for Concord after a decade with Blue Note, is in the early stages of selecting songs with producer Don Was for his next album.   
On a side note, Elling has one of the most interesting collection of links I have ever seen on a website.

For the record, my quest to attend 100 shows and see 300 acts this year is down to  34 shows and 128 acts to go.

During an interview for my weekly column in Daily Variety, guitarist-singer John Pizzarelli did not explain he and wife Jessica Molaskey would be creating rounds out of two different songs throughout their set. Beyond the fun and playful, they hit a serious note by combing the "South Pacific" tune on racism "You've Got to  Be Carefully Taught" and "Children Will Listen" from "Into the Woods," a darker and jazzier take than Barbra Streisand's medley of the songs.  They take their act to the Cafe Carlyle on Sept. 9 for a two-month run.
At the early show on Aug. 29 at Catalina Bar & Grill, John & Jessica performed:
I Didn't Know What Time it Was (Jessica)> Just in Time (John)/My Baby Just Cares About Me / Small World / I Want to Be Happy / Meditation (John) > Summer, Highland Falls (Jessica) / Happy Talk / This Can't Be Love / It's Easy to Remember / Johnny One Note  / I'm Just Wild About Harry >Everybody Loves Louis / Hide in Plain Sight (that's a guess) / You've Got to Be Carefully Taught (John) > Children Will Listen (Jessica) / You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You / Little Girl   

Once Boz Scaggs wraps up his tour of small theaters, he will hit a few jazz clubs in support of his second album of standards, "Speak Low," which will be released Oct. 28 on Decca.
He will also unveil jazz versions of hit tunes from "Silk Degrees": "Lowdown," "JoJo" and "Lido Shuffle." Since the album is all ballads, those tunes could go a long way to bringing some pep to the show.
Scaggs will perform at Jazz Alley in Seattle Oct.30-Nov.2;Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis on Nov. 5 and 6; UCO Jazz Club in Edmond, Okla., on Nov. 7; the Blue Note in New York  Nov. 10-11 and 14-16;
Blue Alley in D.C. on Nov. 19;  Ram's Head on Stage in Annapolis, Md., on Nov. 20; and Boston's Wilbur Theatre on Nov. 23.

Monterey Jazz Festival Records has come up with six titles for its second round of releases of concert recordings.The releases are slated for Aug. 5.
Four are year-specific recordings: Art Blakey and the Giants of Jazz/1972; Shirley Horn/1994; Tito Puente & His Orchestra/1977; and Jimmy Witherspoon featuring Robben Ford/1972. Two “best of” recordings are Dave Brubeck "50 Years of Dave Brubeck: Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival, 1958-2007" and Cal Tjader "The Best of Cal Tjader, Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival, 1958-1980."
Interesting tidbits: The  Blakey album includes Thelonious Monk on piano; among the performers with Brubeck are, of course, Paul Desmond on alto but also Gerry Mulligan on baritone saxophone; Puente performs with a 15-piece orchestra; and the Witherspoon disc includes a bonus track with Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster from 1959.
At the 51st Monterey Jazz Fest in September, the Cuban flutist and singer Orlando “Maraca” Valle is slated to record a CD with special guests David Sánchez, Miguel Zenón, Ed Simon, Murray Low, John Benitez, Giovanni Hidalgo, Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez and the Monterey Jazz Festival Chamber Orchestra.

Here's a great way to kill a half hour: Billy Taylor on piano, Charles Mingus on bass and Marquis Foster on drums in a radio transcription of a set at the Boston club Storyville. Taylor has posted it on his website.
The story: Nat Hentoff, then a staff Announcer a WMEX, regularly hosted remote broadcasts from two Boston clubs. He remembers the gig because "it was the first time I heard Charles Mingus.  I'd heard Jimmy Blanton, of course, but Mingus, his sound and his technique were really a revelation.  Of course I knew Billy's work, having interviewed him on the radio.  He was then, as now, such a master of the piano that it was effortless."
It was Taylor's mentor, Jo Jones, who set up the Storyville gig, and lined up the personnel.Shortly after a discussion with Papa Jo, he found himself on train bound for Boston from New York with Mingus.  "We talked non-stop for nearly four hours.  That was the first of many lively discussions I had with Mingus.  We disagreed on our approach to many different things and argued about them, quite passionately.  I'd run into Mingus on the street and could easily spend a half hour just standing there, arguing.  He was a remarkable man and bassist.
"He was really ripe for my Trio and I gave him lots of space.  No bassist before or after has that kind of approach for playing melodies.  ... We were friends right up until the time he passed away, in 1978 and I really miss playing and arguing with him."

After finishing an exhaustive article on Phil Schaap the radio host, author and Charlie Parker expert, New Yorker writer David Remnick set out to create a list of 100 titles that "are meant to provide a broad sampling of jazz classics and wonders." The most essential jazz recordings list includes virtually every phase of the music, from  early New Orleans jazz, swing, bebop and cool jazz through modal jazz, hard bop and fusion.
He does not mess with the jazz canon much, but the inclusion of boxed sets in lists like these is always a bit dicey: All of Ornette Coleman's Atlantic albums make it into the list via a box, for example, but John Coltrane is limited to only one from his days at the label, “My Favorite Things.”  Duke Ellington and Miles Davis are represented by five each; Parker four; Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus are in with three.
Among the interesting, perhaps off-the-beaten-path, choices:

Fats Waller, “Handful of Keys” (Proper, 2004; tracks recorded 1922-43).
John Kirby Sextet, “Night Whispers: 1938-46” (Jazz Legends, 2005).
Thelonious Monk, “Live at the It Club, 1964” (Sony, 1998).
Miles Davis, “Highlights from the Plugged Nickel” (Sony, 1995; tracks recorded 1965).
Charles Mingus Sextet, “Cornell 1964” (Blue Note, 2007).
Sun Ra, “Greatest Hits—Easy Listening for Intergalactic Travel” (Evidence, 2000; tracks recorded 1956-73).
Abbey Lincoln, “That’s Him” (Riverside, 1957).
John Coltrane, “Ascension” (Impulse!, 1965).
Jackie McLean, “A Fickle Sonance” (Blue Note, 1961).
Albert Ayler, “Spiritual Unity” (ESP, 1964).
Betty Carter, “Betty Carter’s Finest Hour” (Verve, 2003; tracks recorded 1958-92).
World Saxophone Quartet, “World Saxophone Quartet Plays Duke Ellington” (Nonesuch, 1986).
Charlie Haden and Hank Jones, “Steal Away” (Polygram, 1995).
Cassandra Wilson, “Traveling Miles” (Blue Note, 1999).
The Bill Charlap Trio, “Live at the Village Vanguard” (Blue Note, 2007).
The full list is here.

Unsigned rock bands, whether they be heritage acts or baby bands, were keen on the idea of recording shows and issuing CDs for patrons as they left venues. It was a plan that seemed pretty sound for awhile just a few years ago, but there appears to be less and less interest in the instant recordings.
One has to wonder, though, why didn't the show just moved to the Internet? And face it - many act is performign the same show night after night and they don;t have much value to anyone who was not at a particular concert. Jazz, on the other hand, is ripe for this opportunity: No two performances should ever be the same. Or at least we like to think they won't be.
Jazz trumpeter Dave Douglas sold shows in late 2006 and he's going in for a second round.
Douglas and his band Keystone will be recording all of their sets Thursday through Sunday at the Jazz Standard in New York. Show will be available for download purchase within 24 hours of the performance at the website of his label, Greenleaf, which also boasts a great blog. He's selling each set for $7; all eight shows are available for 50 buck.
Douglas is already making his new album "Moonshine" available at the site; it will be released at retail on May 13. Sets will feature compositions that have appeared on "Freak In," "Keystone" and "Moonshine," as well as unrecorded material.
The downloads will be offered in a new file type called a FLAC file, a lossless compression encoder that delivers CD quality.  The files will be slightly more expensive than the MP3 albums which are also being sampled at 256k, rather than the standard 192k.    
His Friday and Saturday late sets are being recorded for broadcast on the BBC’s Jazz On 3.
Douglas first recorded and released live sets in December 2006.

Celebrations of the 50th anniversaries of two landmark jazz albums, John Coltrane's “Giant Steps” and Miles Davis' “Kind of Blue” are among the thousands of events planned for the 2008-09 Jazz at Lincoln Center season.

That's part the news. JALC has come up with yet another extraordinary schedule to fill their halls, three of the finest venues in this country for listening. This schedule, along with Jets home games, often determines my visits to New York.

The calendar is being circled for Nov. 20-22 (Music of Monk and Danilo Perez Plays Monk); Jan. 9 and 10 for Roy Hargrove and Cedar Walton; March 6 and 7 for the SFJAZZ Collective performing works by Horace Silver; and Kenny Barron making his Allen Room debut March 19 and 21.
The real potential for a mind-blower is the band featuring Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Kenny Garrett, Christian McBride and Vinnie Colaiuta on April 23-25.

The full performance schedule is after the jump 

Just two days after being given the president's award by the Recording Academy, pianist  McCoy Tyner has announced a tour with dancer Savion Glover that will start in mid-February.
The band is Tyner, Glover, bassist Gerald Cannon and drummer Eric Kamau Gravatt.
Tour dates:
Feb. 15 - Atlanta Ferst Center
21 - Roanoke, Va. Jefferson Center
23 - Camden, N.J., Center
24 - Washington, D.C. Kennedy Center
28 - Buffalo, N.Y. U of Buffalo
29 - Red Bank, N.J. Count Basie Theatre.

March 2 - Wilmington, Del. Grand Opera House
7 - Albany, N.Y. The Egg
8 - Peekskill, N.Y. Paramount Center for the Arts
14 - San Francisco Jazz Festival

Saxophonist Thomas Chapin was onto something back in the late 1970s.
When we were in college he stood out from just about everyone else. An easygoing guy with a gentle laugh, he used the saxophone to express his soul with authority. He was an astute technician playing with the jazz band at Rutgers University and when he returned with Lionel Hampton's outfit. He was a fiery and inventive performer in his own bands, like Machine Gun, and within  two decades after graduation - at which he played a mean "Pomp and Circumstance"  - he was one of the most compelling forces in the downtown New York jazz scene. I was fortunate enough to catch a performance with one of his bands that included William Hooker at the Knitting Factory during a Gotham Visit. One piece, one hour, indescribable intensity.
That was shortly before his death from leukemia in 1998. He was 40.
To celebrate his life, two NYC concerts under the umbrella of "Lift Off! Remembering Thomas Chapin" will take place Feb. 13 and 15.

Trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, born in Nigeria and raised in Oakland, was named the winner of this year's Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition Sunday at a tribute concert honoring Herbie Hancock.
Akinmusire studied with Steve Coleman at the Manhattan School of Music and in 2001 began touring and recording with him. He has also toured with Hancock and Wayne Shorter throughout Vietnam and India, and performed and recorded with the late Joe Henderson, Christian McBride, Joshua Redman and the San Francisco Jazz Collective.
Regarded as the most prestigious jazz competition in the world, judges were the trumpeters Quincy Jones, Herb Alpert, Terence Blanchard, Hugh Masekela, Clark Terry and Roy Hargrove.
Akinmusire receives a $20,000 scholarship. Second place winner Jean Caze received a $10,000 scholarship and third place winner Michael Rodriguez received a $5,000 scholarship.

In New York for CMJ, it felt like a good idea to step completely outside the indie rock realm and venture into a cabaret setting and then some downtown free jazz. Judy Kuhn dazzled with exceptionally honest renditions of Laura Nyro songs; in an eye-opening performance, Butch Morris conducted the Nublu Orchestra in the

Alphabet

Favoring funk flavors that his players clearly relished, Morris went in a rooted, direction Monday not usually found on his recordings. Morris calls his work “conductions”: With baton, he guides the music and the musicians, asking for thunderous bass lines, the occasional rat-a-tat drumming and a steady recurring single note blast from the alto sax. It meshed wonderfully, recalling the funk of Miles Davis’ “On the Corner” period and fed into some Sun Ra-ish electronic keyboard lines and, for a few very captivating minutes, some dub reggae. Morris is making the usually derisive term "fusion" a badge of honor.

Years ago, when the suggestion first arose that the Internet would level the playing field among musicians and labels, I figured one of the true beneficiaries would be jazz musicians. The majors are no longer interested in the music, European labels can't guarantee distribution and outside of specialty shops like Downtown Music Gallery in New York and Jazz Record Mart in Chicago, where might a jazz artist get their indie CD heard?
Besides, as the Knitting Factory label learned in the 1990s, indie jazz records do most of their business (about 80%) within a few miles of where the performers/performance space is based.
Palmetto Records, the fine Philadelphia label that has released superb discs by Ben Allison, Andrew Hill and Orrin Evans among many others, makes its first venture into the digital-only realm with the band Slow Poke.
Slow Poke, a popular downtown New York quartet, comprises slide guitarist David Tronzo, saxophonist Michael Blake, bassist Tony Scherr and percussionist Kenny Wollesen. Their album "At Home," which is available at the label's website, was recorded at Scherr's house in Brooklyn. Band's first album, recorded after "At Home," was "Redemption."

The three venues at Gotham's Lincoln Center are some o the premiere places to hear jazz. Even if the music being played isn't arresting, the rooms are acoustic wonders, despite the fact that two of them have windows behind the performers
to provide delightful views of the Upper West Side.
Music from Lincoln center will be featured in two new XM shows: "Live from Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola"
and "Live from Jazz at Lincoln Center," which will feature live performances from the Frederick P.
Rose Hall.
"Live from Dizzy's" will premiere Oct. 19 on the Real Jazz channel (XM 70), and will feature  pianist Cedar Walton. Future episodes will include performances from Trio Da Paz, Tom Harrell and Charles McPherson and Eric Alexander.
"Jazz at Lincoln Center" hits the airwaves Oct. 20, also on XM 70, with the Benny Carter Centennial concert featuring the JLCO performing music and arrangements by the legendary saxophonist.  Future performances will feature Monty Alexander, Dave Brubeck, Paquito D'Rivera, Kurt Elling, Frank Foster,  Ivan Lins, Russell Malone, Branford Marsalis, Mulgrew Miller, Lewis Nash, Rosa Passos, Eric Reed, Marcus Roberts and others.
JALC artistic director Wynton Marsalis kicks off a new season of his  XM series "In the Swing Seat with Wynton Marsalis" on Sept. 28.

Django Reinhardt's grandson David will be appearing at the eighth annual Django Reinhardt Festival at New York's Birdland, running Nov. 6-11, and appearing at a handful of shows across the country.
David Reinhardt will be making his first trip to the U.S.  (One hopes that, unlike his esteemed grandfather, he brings a guitar). He will perform with guitarists Dorado Schmitt, his son Samson and Kruno, who have made a career playing the hot jazz that Reinhardt pioneered in France in the 1930s and '40s.
Playing Stephane Grappelli parts will be violinist Florin Nicuescu, a Romanian who lives  in Paris.
Bassist Brian Torf serves as musical director.
Each night will feature a guest artist: Saxophonist Houston Person on Nov. 6; harmonica player Howard Levy on Nov. 7; saxophonist Joel Frahm on the eighth and 11th; Itallian singer Roberta Gambarini on Nov. 9; and Colombian jazz harpist Edmar Castaneda on Nov. 10.
The Django Festival also has dates beyond Gotham: Oct. 26 at Chicago Symphony Hall; Nov. 2 at Kimmel Center in Philadelphia; Nov. 3 at the Napa Opera House in Napa, Calif.; Nov. 4 at the SF Jazz Festival in Herbst Hall; and Nov. 16 and 17 at D.C.'s Kennedy Center.
The real deal:

18-year-old Victoria Hart went from London waitress to A-list performer literally overnight when a friend of George Clooney's invited her to sing at a fundraiser in Cannes for dozens of celebrities (including much of the "Ocean's 13" cast). At the time, her performance was a sensation that caused an instant bidding war, with both EMI and Universal among the rumored interested parties.

Now, just a few months later, she's ready for mainstream exposure, as her debut album Whatever Happened To Romance? is being issued by Universal Classics & Jazz on August 28th. 'Romance' will feature her unique voice and will touch on pop, jazz, blues and salsa.

Hart recently performed on the Today Show (her U.S. TV debut), and you can read a BBC interview with her here.

An interesting program is on next week's Hollywood Bowl calendar.

Cedric the Entertainer will host the Jazz at the Movies program at the Hollywood Bowl on July 25.
Bassist Christian McBride, the Creative Chair for Jazz at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is  music director for the evening; arranger and composer Vince Mendoza will lead a jazz orchestra performs along with clips.
Herbie Hancock's great score for "Death Wish" is on the bill as are the scores for "Anatomy of a Murder," "The Pink Panther," "Blazing Saddles," "The Blues Brothers," "Catch Me If You Can," "Mo' Better Blues," "Elevator to the Gallows,"  "Ocean's Eleven," "Austin Powers" and some  James Bond pics.
Trumpeter Wallace Roney will perform on "Elevator To the Gallows" and "Death Wish," and singer-pianist Jamie Cullum will perrform "Trouble Man."