Best Of New York Sessions: Volume 1 Super-Audio CD

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Even if jazz was never endemic to one locale -- Harlem stride pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith once defiantly traced its origins to New Jersey -- there's no denying that this music has thrived in New York City ever since James P. Johnson came out with the Charleston and the Original Dixieland Jazz Band played Reisenweber's Café at West 58th Street and Columbus Circle. Released in 2007 on a hybrid Surround Sound Super Audio CD that is compatible with regular CD players, the Chesky label's Best of New York Sessions, Vol. 1 presents New York jazz as it sounds at the dawn of the new millennium. Some of it was recorded inside of St. Peter's Episcopal Church, 346 W. 20th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues. All of it was engineered with state-of-the-art high-tech exactitude, using, readers are told, a single-point microphone, no overdubs, no compressors in the sound path, no multi-tracking, and no large mixing consoles. In other words, the latest developments in 21st century audio recording technology appear to be partly based upon pre-stereo high-fidelity standards. What you get on this superb sampler are selections from eight different Chesky albums. These are Hank Jones' West of 5th with Jimmy Cobb and Christian McBride; Christian McBride's New York Time with Jimmy Cobb and Javon Jackson; the Jimmy Cobb Quartet's Cobb's Corner with Roy Hargrove, Ronnie Mathews, and Peter Washington; Nicholas Payton's Wayne Shorter tribute album Mysterious Shorter with Bob Belden and Sam Yahel; John Hicks' last album, On the Wings of an Eagle (formerly Tribecca Blues), with Buster Williams and Louis Hayes; David Hazeltine's The Jobim Songbook in New York with Nat Reeves and Joe Farnsworth; Manhattan by the David Hazeltine-George Mraz Trio with Billy Drummond; and Structures by John Abercrombie and Eddie Gómez with Gene Jackson. Each of these albums represents cutting-edge New York jazz at its finest, and this anthology does exactly what it is supposed to do by creating in the listener a healthy desire to hear more. ~ arwulf arwulf

Liner Note Authors: David Chesky; Norman Chesky.

Recording information: St. Peter's Episcopal Church, New York, NY.

Editor: Nicholas Prout.