It is jazz festival time, so we are featuring some of the artists that are performing here in Toronto and across the country!  Look inside for great deals recordings by Herbie Hancock, Harry Connick Jr, Keith Jarrett and more...

smallsLIVE - the official record label for Smalls Jazz Club! Located at the heart of New York City’s Greenwich Village, Smalls Jazz Club has been a fixture on the jazz scene of New York City for 15 years.   It is an intimate and comfortable room which allows artists to relax and really let the magic to happen.  SmallsLIVE is dedicated to the idea that jazz is best heard in a live context and that the greatest jazz recordings have historically been live concerts.

 The POLL WINNERS label is devoted to the CD reissue of albums that received the maximum 5-star rating in a Down Beat album review. This only rarely happened, and most of the Down Beat albums have become true classics revered by all music lovers. These new editions present the complete original 5-star albums, which are often expanded to include interesting bonus albums or bonus tracks by the same artists at the peak of their talents. This collection presents true milestones of jazz history made by the most celebrated musicians of the genre.

 A very prolific recording artist, both in sheer quantity and stylistic variances, Keith Jarrett continues to be one of the most succesful pianists in recent history.  Considering where his career has taken him, it is easy to forget that he started out in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers before joining Miles Davis's foray into electronic music.  Jarrett's Standards Trio, with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette, perform mostly standard repertoire but in an exploratory, lyrical manner that never belies the music's origins.  His melodically rich lines are instantaneously recognizable, as are his signature intros to tunes which often seem like separate peices unto themselves.