Grammy award-winning crossover group, Turtle Island Quartet, joins forces with mandolinist Mike Marshall for this new recording. This collaboration brings together a long time musical friendship that has been brewing for nearly 35 years. Both of these artists have dedicated their lives to bridging the musical gaps between jazz, classical, Latin styles and bluegrass. With their new disc, Mike Marshall & the Turtle Island Quartet, they create some of the most evocative string music heard today. This self-titled record includes an original work by violinist David Balakrishnan of Turtle Island Quartet called Interplay, which explores Balakrishnan's Indian musical heritage through the cycle of loss and recovery moving gracefully from 5/4 rhythms that verge on Irish jigs, to placid raga-esque meditations. Marshall's arrangements of some of his classic tunes, including Gator Strut and Egypt, provide a perfect vehicle for Turtle Island's improvisational skills. Marshall's love for Brazilian music - demonstrated with Gismonti's Loro and the Brazilian Choro Medley - takes the listener through the streets of Rio on a multi-layered bed of melodies and rhythms.

2008 edition of the Jazz icon's classic album complete with 11 bonus tracks. Birth Of The Cool was originally released in 1949 and remains one of the best loved Jazz albums of all-time. On the album, Miles is joined by Kai Winding, Junior Collins, Bill Barber, Lee Konitz, Gerry Mulligan, Al Haig, Joe Shulman and Max Roach. The bonus tracks on this edition were recorded live during various radio broadcasts. Jazz Track.

1. My Funny Valentine(5:59)~~~ 2. Blues by Five(9:59)~~~ 3. Airegin(4:24)~~~ 4. Tune Up/When Lights Are Low(13:08)

Miles Davis's second great quintet had been together a little over a year when this recording was made in December 1965 in Chicago (it represents a good chunk of the strongest moments drawn from the eight-CD Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel). Everyone in the band was a star, and close listening to any one of them apart from the others is revealing. Bassist Ron Carter erects the scaffolding, while Herbie Hancock's piano adds filigree and lace, and drummer Tony Williams thunders and sparks. Miles is sublime, but it is Wayne Shorter who is busy making his place in jazz history here, secure with the unending freshness and volatility of his ideas and the beauty of his sound. The band hangs together miraculously, always balancing their risks with nuance and the subtlest of dynamics. An irresistible record, and essential for hearing one of the great musical organizations at work. —John Szwed

Japanese Blu-Spec CD pressing of this classic album. The Blue Spec format takes Blu-ray disc technology to create CD's which are compatible with normal CD players but provides ultra high quality sound. Sony.

This CD plays 4 tracks from the Miles Davis Sextet.

Originally released in 1959, Miles Davis's magnum opus Kind of Blue is still considered by many to be one of the greatest albums of all time. Starring Davis, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb, Kind of Blue has held onto its status as an album that crosses genres, speaks to generations, and is one of the first (if not the first) album that any new jazz acolyte purchases. Kind of Blue (Legacy Edition) offers the complete studio sessions on 2 CDs, including false starts, alternate takes and a 17-minute 1960 live version of "So What."

The most satisfying sort of audacity was the rule with Miles Davis's second great quintet. One of six studio albums cut by the group between 1965 and 1968, Miles Smiles finds them executing three Wayne Shorter compositions and one by the leader, along with Eddie Harris's "Freedom Jazz Dance," former Davis cohort Jimmy Cobb's "Gingerbread Boy," and the usual mix of finesse and barreling momentum. Even when nodding toward the then-burgeoning hard-bop movement on the Harris piece, the group makes its own mark in a hundred different ways, from Herbie Hancock's spare touch to the thoroughly declarative solo Davis lays down. It's hard to pick the most exceptional cut on such a top-flight disc, but certainly Shorter's deceptively simple "Orbits" and "Footprints" deserve mention; on the former, the players take turns stating the melody and then rumbling over it. The latter's echoes of "Caravan" make way for an improv performance that not only hangs tough in itself, but seems to have provided a template for the entire early career of Wynton Marsalis. —Rickey Wright

This contains two of the classic Miles Davis sessions from 1954 that made all the critics who hailed his appearance at the 1955 Newport Jazz Festival a comeback seem like a pack of Rip Van Winkles. 'Walkin' & 'Blue 'n' Boogie' are quintessential blues jams with all the pluses and none of the minuses of that genre. The solos by Davis, J.J. Johnson, Lucky Thompson, and Horace Silver are electric and the ensemble punches powerfully. OJC/Fantasy Records.

Miles Davis's 1956 Quintet was one of his classic groups, featuring tenor-saxophonist John Coltrane, pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Philly Jo Jones. They recorded four albums for Prestige in two marathon sessions. Among the highlights are It Never Entered My Mind, Four, In Your Own Sweet Way and two versions of The Theme. The music is essential in one form or another. 8 tracks. From the OJC/ Prestige label.