Wolfgang Dauner's creativity is varied and, more than anything, unbroken. With this CD be has made get another important accent in his career. Wolfgang Dauner's touch is multi-faceted and has many realms of feeling. They range from the nervous touch ofa Hampton Hawes or Huss Freeman to the finesse of one such as Bill Evans. Many artists such as Elvin Jones, Albert Mangelsdorff and Eddie Gomez, with whom he plaged in a combo for years, have contributed towards his musical profile. I am always glad when I have the honorto play music with him once more. Emotional sound patterns, such as »Raga lntro« or »Hypnos«, document the broad range of expression which characterizes these recordings…

Wolfgang Dauner has now been highly active on the scene for more than fifty years. Dauner hired top young musicians to be around him for the current upgrade to United 2.0. The second United generation, like the first one, is eagerly researching the crossing points between jazz, rock, funk and world music…

Stephan Micus is an extraordinary musician who collects instruments from around the world, learns to play them and composes his own music for them. He rarely plays them in their traditional manner and often adapts and extends the instruments. The point is not to recreate traditional sounds, but create something new. He often combines instruments that would never normally be heard together and frequently multitracks them. He plays nine different instruments on Inland Sea, although the nyckelharpa, a keyed fiddle from Sweden is the focus in a way that's quite unusual for Micus. Inland Sea is his 22nd album for ECM. Micus says that Inland Sea refers both to a geographical landscape, but is also "something we have inside ourselves".

Musicmagic is Return to Forever's seventh and final studio album and one of the best jazz recordings released in the fusion genre. The album contains the final line-up of the band with only founders Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke returning from the previous recordings. This 1977 release was the first Return to Forever album in five years to contain vocals, performed here by Corea's future wife Gayle Moran and the surprisingly enjoyable Stanley Clarke. This album also marked the return of original member Joe Farrell on saxophone and flute, along with several new members making up a killer five-piece horn section.

Japanese pianist Keiko Matsui is a gentle person, she grows as an artist to a radiant personality, when she performs live. Tokyo born Keiko Matsui devotes her life to her favorite instrument, the piano. Since her fifth birthday she loves and performs this piece of equipment. Classified as New Age or Smooth Jazz musician, she always expands her work to other genres. Blending Eastern and Western influences she has found her own style presented in numerous solo albums.

Recorded in early 1975, Tale Spinnin', Weather Report's fifth studio album is filled with sunny textures of Latin and African flavors. During the '60s and early '70s Weather Report began to move towards a more cosmopolitan groove, and a melding of song with jazz in new and refreshing ways. The recording stands with anything recorded during the so-called "jazz-rock fusion" era, if only on the basis of the range of fresh, intriguing originals by the band's co-founders and principle composers, the keyboardist Joe Zawinul and the saxophonist Wayne Shorter. Zawinul's pioneering interest in what we now call world music is more in evidence with the exotic percussion, wordless vocals, and sandy sound effects of "Badia," and his synthesizer sophistication is growing along with the available technology. Wayne Shorter's work on soprano sax is more animated than on their previous albums and Alphonso Johnson puts his melodic bass more to the fore.

Miles in the Sky reflects the intriguing curiosities and rainbow possibilities suggested by the album cover. Miles Davis’ fifth and final album with his classic second quintet is kaleidoscopic in sound, forward-looking in structure, and contextually grounded in approach. As the legendary leader’s first venture into what would become fusion, it’s historical for containing the premier appearances of electric piano, bass, and guitar on a Davis effort. Laden with rich textures and style-bridging elements, Mobile Fidelity’s SACD brings the aural magic into focus. Mastered from the original master tapes, this collectable audiophile version of Miles in the Sky joins the ranks of eleven other essential Davis sets given supreme sonic and packaging treatment by Mobile Fidelity.

The follow-up to the breakthrough Headhunters album was virtually as good as its wildly successful predecessor: an earthy, funky, yet often harmonically and rhythmically sophisticated tour de force. There is only one change in the Headhunters lineup – swapping drummer Harvey Mason for Mike Clark – and the switch results in grooves that are even more complex. Hancock continues to reach into the rapidly changing high-tech world for new sounds, most notably the metallic sheen of the then-new ARP string synthesizer which was already becoming a staple item on pop and jazz-rock records. Again, there are only four long tracks, three of which ("Palm Grease," "Actual Proof," "Spank-A-Lee") concentrate on the funk, with plenty of Hancock's wah-wah clavinet, synthesizer textures and effects, and electric piano ruminations that still venture beyond the outer limits of post-bop.

The harmonic richness and general sonic elegance of Peer's sound cannot be overemphasized; in his hands, a four-stringed electric bass has more scope and panache than a six stringed guitar in the hands of other musicians.

On the Corner is a studio album by American jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Miles Davis. It was recorded in June and July 1972, and released later that year by Columbia Records. The album continued Davis' exploration of jazz fusion, bringing together funk rhythms with the influence of experimental composer Karlheinz Stockhausen and free jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman. Recording sessions for the album featured a changing lineup of musicians including bassist Michael Henderson, guitarist John McLaughlin, and keyboardist Herbie Hancock, with Davis playing the electric organ more prominently than his trumpet.

The Chicago Transit Authority recorded this double-barreled follow-up to their eponymously titled 1969 debut effort. The contents of Chicago II (1970) underscore the solid foundation of complex jazz changes with heavy electric rock & roll that the band so brazenly forged on the first set. The septet also continued its ability to blend the seemingly divergent musical styles into some of the best and most effective pop music of the era. One thing that had changed was the band's name, which was shortened to simply Chicago to avoid any potential litigious situations from the city of Chicago's transportation department – which claimed the name as proprietary property. Musically, James Pankow (trombone) was about to further cross-pollinate the band's sound with the multifaceted six-song "Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon." The classically inspired suite also garnered the band two of its most beloved hits – the upbeat pop opener "Make Me Smile" as well as the achingly poignant "Color My World" – both of which remained at the center of the group's live sets.

Dr. Laxminarayana is renowened violinist and the father of three outstanding violin players namely Dr. L. Subramaniam, L. Shankar and L. Vaidyanathan. This music of this album is recorded in Dr. Laxminarayana Global Music Festival conduced in various countries from 1992 to 2000. The performances included in this album ranges from World Fusion to Roots and Folk to Western Classical & Indian Classical. Along with Dr. L. Subramaniam, Some stellar musicians have been participated in this festival including Herbie Hancock, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Jie-Bing Chen etc. Enjoy.

Drummer Billy Cobham was fresh from his success with the Mahavishnu Orchestra when he recorded his debut album, which is still his best. Most of the selections showcase Cobham in a quartet with keyboardist Jan Hammer, guitarist Tommy Bolin, and electric bassist Lee Sklar. Two other numbers include Joe Farrell on flute and soprano and trumpeter Jimmy Owens with guitarist John Tropea, Hammer, bassist Ron Carter, and Ray Barretto on congas. The generally high-quality compositions (which include "Red Baron") make this fusion set a standout, a strong mixture of rock-ish rhythms and jazz improvising.

Recorded in Japan in July 1973, this massive, three-LP live album was available outside the United States in 1974 but held back from domestic release in the U.S. It features the same "New Santana Band" that recorded Welcome, and combines that group's jazz and spiritual influences with performances of earlier Latin rock favorites like "Oye Como Va."

If your Latin jazz collection centers mainly around styles from Cuba and Brazil, pianist Edward Simon would like you to consider expanding your library to include musical influences from a culturally diverse land geographically situated between those two countries – namely Venezuela, where he was born and lived until the age of 12. Simon is an acclaimed post-bop and modern creative jazz pianist in his adopted country of the United States, and while Latin American elements have certainly seasoned his recorded output to date, this 2014 Sunnyside release finds him focusing more intently than ever on the nexus between creative jazz and the folk music of his home country. The album's title is derived from "Venezuelan Suite," whose four parts fill over 28 minutes of the disc's concise 38-minute duration. Simon composed the suite for his Ensemble Venezuela, and the ten-member version of the group heard here – including musicians from the U.S., Venezuela, and Colombia – is wonderfully vibrant, ably fulfilling the pianist's creative intent. Chamber Music America commissioned Simon to write this work, and he rose to the challenge with music that is suitably rich with timbral and textural variety.