Niko

It's an all-star band featuring Melissa Aldana, Nduduzo Makhathini, Linda May Jan Oh and Jeff Tain Watts in addition to Lovano... Quite a band imho even though it can't quite imagine them all together...

The 80s edition of Berendt's jazz book would mention people like Kenny G... But, if you only have half a page for Ben Webster and a sentence or two for Johnny Griffin or Roland Kirk, someone like Kenny G cannot expect more than to be part of a list "further saxophone players in 1980s fusion jazz, some crossing over into what has become known as smooth jazz include Kenny G, Dave Koz,..." Acker Bilk might get a similar name check in the clarinet section... The sentence doesn't really hurt anyone and I always appreciated that Berendt tried to keep that type of open mind... If the record store stocks it, then the book should explain it... Then again, I also wouldn't mind if the sentence was missing.

Yes, American based in the Netherlands... I've read that comparison often but I wouldn't know of an interview where he says this himself.... Btw Lewis Porter has an interesting pair of posts on why Brubeck has not been much of an influence on other pianist https://lewisporter.substack.com/t/brubeckdave

Michael Moore was the first name that came to my mind

played a bit more of it and read up on the sidemen... apparently pianist Chris Gage was some sort of unrecorded local hero https://www.jazzstreetvancouver.ca/artists/44/ https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/chris-gage-emc and even though some tapes featuring him have appeared before (e.g. an archival release with Fraser McPherson), four CDs with Art Pepper is fairly massive for his legacy... that said, while all four players are clearly audible, the focus was apparently on capturing Pepper well - which worked out nicely...

Not that I am aware of, there are various things from the early 50s (e.g. on Xanadu) but I wouldn't know of other live Pepper from the late 50s when he recorded his famous Contemporary albums

streaming it myself now... I like it much better than I expected, recording quality is not amazing in general but Art is captured really well... like: there are not many Charlie Parker bootlegs with this fidelity... and these days I am much more interested in early or middle Pepper than in late Pepper...

a lot (or all) of the set is on youtube...

I was in Odense in 2024 which I turned into twice 2 hours in Copenhagen to and from the airport. There are loads of record stores. The two best ones I saw are Jazz Cup and Sound Station (even though the latter had somewhat ambitious and erratic pricing... I am the rare customer who might buy a Burt Bales LP for 12 Euro... but not for 30...), the two stores are in fairly different parts of the city so in each case, it's super easy to find three or four others stores in the area which may or may not be hit or miss... Anyway, it was a fun city for record shopping and I confidently recommend building your hunts around either of those two stores...

Not what I'd been looking for, not from the 60s and 70s... But some footage of the two

there was a nice reissue of The Cry in the recent Contemporary series on Craft Recordings https://craftrecordings.com/products/the-cry-contemporary-records-acoustic-sounds-series-180g-lp

Melissa Aldana - Filin Out today, Aldana plays Cuban ballads from the 40s to 60s... On my fourth spin, quite happy with this

Heard them a lot as a kid growing up in Cologne where they had a weekly radio show... Can't say that I grew into a fan but one album I remember liking is this one with Charlie Mariano and a fusion of jazz and Indian music https://www.discogs.com/release/4008349-WDR-Big-Band-Köln-Charlie-Mariano-Karnataka-College-Of-Percussion-Mike-Herting-Sketches-Of-Bangalor but I may be biased since I was in the audience that day... They have regular programs which they play for the radio and in concerts in the region, only some of which make it into albums ... This week it's probably carnival music, but in other weeks they have quite nice and diverse projects

Some wonderful stuff in there, some classics like the Texier albums or Angel Song, loads that I don't know of course... But also some that I didn't expect anyone else would know (like that Eric van der Westen record, he recorded some nice stuff in those years)

I also have that impression that pre-1950 Jazz sells hardly at all, and that the 1950s used to do better a decade ago while the 1970s are comparatively popular at the moment (as shown also by things like the Jazz Dispensary reissue series which has its focus there)... And yes, that could be a pattern of aging generations but I believe it's simply a matter of fluctuations in taste... At least when it comes to vinyl sales rather than CDs since those older generations seem to care mostly about CDs...