An incredible meeting of two massive Chicago talents – with results that are even more amazing than you might think! We've always loved the music of flute player Nicole Mitchell – and have reveled in watching her get even more righteous and sophisticated in her projects in recent years – and we've always had deep respect for the words and wisdom of Haki Madhubuti, a writer who makes us incredibly proud to live in the Windy City. Yet together, these two genius talents resonate with even more strength than we might ever have imagined – as Nicole turns in some of her deepest music in years, to set up the right kind of setting for Haki's words – all served up in a mixture of jazz and spoken passages that almost blows away most classics of this nature from the 70s! The group is wonderful – with Mitchell on flute, alongside Pharez Whitted on trumpet, Tomeka Reid on cello, Harrison Bankhead on drums, Renee Baker and Zara Zaharieva on violins, Tomas Fujiwara on drums, and Jovia Armstrong – and singer Ugochi provides additional vocal support for Madhubuti's spoken lead – as the group also soars out on some strong instrumental passages too. The scope of Mitchell's writing is even broader than before – and titles include "Rise Vision", "Move Into Our Own", "Gwendolyn Brooks", "Often Hard To Believe", "Woman Black", "We Walk The Way Of The New World", "Peace Starts Inside You", "Blackman Unfinished", and "Too Many Of Our Young". CD

Pretty darn obscure stuff from Clifford Thornton – and pretty darn great! The record features Thornton's New Art Ensemble, which includes Sonny King on alto, Karl Berger on vibes, Joe McPhee on trumpet, and Jimmy Garrison on bass. The tracks are similar to some of Thornton's later work, but with an open-ended style that's a bit more free. Titles include "Free Huey", "15th Floor", "O CT", "The Wake", and "Exosphere". CD

An amazing package – a pair of rare avant jazz albums, presented here together! The first album is Peace In The World – maybe the only album issued under the name of Michael Cosmic – but a set that's part of a key legacy with his brother, reedman Phill Musra! The set has Cosmic in very heady territory – sounds that come from his young tenure in the AACM, his brief time with Cecil Taylor, and his budding reputation on the 70s Boston scene – where the set was recorded, and almost stands as a precursor to the rich legacy of improvisational jazz that would emerge on the New England scene for decades to come! Tracks are long and very free, but have spiritual currents too – and Cosmic is mostly on piano, with Musra on soprano sax and tenor, Leonard Brown on soprano and tenor, John Jamyll Jones on bass, Huseyin Ertunc on drums, and Eric Jackson on percussion. Titles include "We Love You Malcolm X", "Peace In The World", "Sapce On Space", and "Arabia". Next is the related album Creator Spaces, by Phill Musra – recorded at the time when he was part of the very underground Boston avant scene – a world that had a slightly different vibe than music coming from Chicago, Detroit, or New York! The album's got a spiritual avant bent – soulful at the core, with lots of references to outer space as well – and an approach that feels a lot like a classic Saturn Records session by Sun Ra, both in sound and spirit! Musra plays reeds, chimes, and percussion – and the group features some incredible sax work by Michael Cosmic, who also plays a bit of organ, again in a tripped-out, Ra-type way. Huseyin Ertunc plays percussion – very free and loose, in ways that are a great balance to the more angular lines of the reeds – and tracks include "The Creator Is So Far Out", "The Creator Spaces", "Egypt", and "Arabia". Also features unreleased tracks "The Creator Is So Far Out (unreleased version)" and "Phyllis". Added to the set is a really special bonus third CD – an unreleased long live performance of "The Prayer" by Worlds Experience Orchestra – a group from the same scene at the time – with Shaddu Jones on piano, Stan Strickland on tenor and soprano, Frank Peterson on alto, John Jamyll Jones on bass, Robert Ruff on cello, Larry Lerner on drums, and John Klein on amplified violin. CD

Killer piano jazz, and some of the greatest modernist work ever recorded by Blue Note! Herbie Nichols deserves every bit of the rare fame he ever got – and it's only the paucity of his recordings that has kept him from achieving the status of Monk or Cecil Taylor as an avant garde forefather. This killer box set features all of Nichols' recordings for Blue Note – including loads of unissued and alternate tracks, packaged with a discographical booklet with writings and photos. Tracks include "Third World", "Step Tempest", "Dance Line", "Shuffle Montgomery", "The Spinning Song", "Riff Primitif", "Query", "Chit Chatting", "Hangover Triangle", "2300 Skidoo", and "Blue Chopsticks". CD

2 of John Lewis' non-MJQ albums of third stream jazz for Atlantic. Both records feature Lewis working with Gunter Schuller, and they both share Lewis and Schuller's keen ambition to move jazz into the sophisticated world of the concert hall. Although not always successful in their endeavors – mostly because they kind of squash jazz into a more academic instrumental pursuit – the records do have some nice moments, and include great players like Ornette Coleman, Jim Hall, Joe Wilder, and Scott LaFaro. Titles include "Abstraction", "Pulcinella", "Piazza Navona", "Variant I", and "Piece For Guitar & Strings". CD

The brilliant third album from Mike Westbrook – a sharp-edged, two volume set with a scathing anti-war theme! The work is Westbrook's first total-concept album, and it's still one of his best – written with an edge that's free from some of the more whimsical touches that showed up in Mike's later years, and played by a core group of British avant soloists with searing intensity! You've never heard large group scoring like this – bold, ambitious, and quite different than most of what's come before. And although the whole thing sounds as if it's going to fall apart at any moment, it always snaps back into a sharp focus just in the nick of time – with brilliant results that bring the same sense of surprise that you might get from, say, a classic album from Charles Mingus or Archie Shepp! Players include Kenny Wheeler and Henry Lowther on trumpets, Mike Gibbs and Paul Rutherford on trombones, John Surman on baritone and soprano sax, Mike Osborne on alto and clarinet, Alan Skidmore on tenor and flute, Brian Smith on tenor, and Harry Miller and Barre Phillips on bass. This set features both volumes of the recording – with titles that include "Landscape", "Hooray", "Other World", "Marching Song", "Transition", "Rosie", "Tension", "Ballad", "Conflict", and "Requiem". Great 3CD set features a full bonus disc of rare material – including the 7" single of "Original Peter" and "Magic Garden" – 1970 recordings of "But It Must Get Better & It Will Get Better" and "When Young" by The Mike Westbrook Quartet, and a 1966 recording of "Marching Song" by the Mike Westbrook Sextet – the last three of which have never been released! CD

An amazing set of tracks from one of our favorite artists ever – a whopping 33 track, 2CD compilation of some of the best of Roy's work for Polydor! Given the title, you can expect a very hip bent to the tracks picked for the set – lots of righteous politics and hip cultural themes bubbling underneath the funky and jazzy grooves that were Roy's forte during the 70s. And while we treasure just about every single track that Roy recorded for Polydor (re-release all the albums – please!), we also have to say that we probably couldn't have come up with a better 33 tracks if we'd picked them ourselves! Titles include "The Old One Two", "Life Is Just A Moment (part 2)", "The Memory", "Hey Uh What You Say Come On", "Running Away", "Searching", "We Live In Brooklyn Baby", "Coffy Is The Color", "Sweet Tears", "Red Black & Green", "No Deposits No Return", "The Third Eye", "Sweet Tears (disco)", "Africa Center Of The World", "Our Time Is Coming", "Destination Motherland", "Fever", "What You Won't Do For Love", "Thank You Thank You", "Can't You See Me (12" mix)", "Baby You Give Me A Feeling", "Everybody Loves The Sunshine", and "Love From The Sun". (Soul, Jazz) CD

Maybe the title's a bit overly-optimistic – but with a record like this, you can certainly imagine a world in which everybody does like Hampton Hawes! The record's the third in a legendary early run for the Contemporary label – trio material that broke Hawes out of the box and firmly put his rich talents on the keys at the top of the list of the best players in jazz. The sound's an amazing blend of jazz idioms at the time – with some of the flourishes of the Peterson or Jamal crowd, but often a tighter, almost rootsier bottom in the rhythms – a touch of the LA soul jazz sound, showing up here quite early! The trio features Red Mitchell on bass and Chuck Thompson on drums – and tracks are short, but showcase the open sound that Hawes was developing at the time. Titles include "Night In Tunisia", "Body & Soul", "Lover Come Back To Me", and the Hawes originals "The Sermon" and "Coolin The Blues". CD

We've always loved the wonderfully dark corners in the tenor work of saxophonist Mark Turner – but it sounds especially great here, in the company of pianist Ethan Iverson – as the two players deliver a superb album of duo material for ECM! Iverson never softens the sound of Turner, but he does bring out a greater current of sentiment than we sometimes hear in his work – especially when Mark might get a bit too "arch", and maybe limit himself to the moodier side of the spectrum. Instead, both he and Iverson create this sublime balance of darkness and light throughout – in a mode that's very unique, even in a familiar ECM setting – on original material that includes "Lugano", "Temporary Kings", "Dixie's Dilemma", "Seven Points", "Myron's World", and "Third Familiar". CD