David Hazeltine – Ballads and Blues Volume I (2024) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

David Hazeltine – Ballads and Blues Volume I (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 23:32 minutes | 509 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Cellar Live

It has come to my attention that over 40 + years of recording, fans very much appreciate the way that I arrange and perform ballads. I think my love for ballad playing goes back to my early years as a music student and how much I learned about harmony studying the solo piano recordings of the late great Bill Evans. He has a melancholy joyfulness in his approach to ballads and that sound has never left my ear.

At the sametime, playing the Blues has always come naturally to me perhaps because I understand the feeling so profoundly. So I had the idea to combine these two aspects of my musical character, and do an EP of Ballads and Blues, and with a nod to the late great McCoy Tyner, call it Ballads & Blues.

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David Hazeltine, Joe Farnsworth, Peter Washington – Blues for Gerry (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

David Hazeltine, Joe Farnsworth, Peter Washington – Blues for Gerry (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:08 minutes | 1,34 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Criss Cross Jazz

American jazz pianist and composer David Hazeltine has a history with Criss Cross Jazz.

To be specific, between 1995 and 2010, Gerry Teekens, the label’s founder presented eight albums on which Hazeltine led trios, quartets and quintets featuring his impeccable, individualistic pianism, original compositions and arrangements, another five with the cooperative all-star sextet One For All, whose grooving, harmonically acute charts bear his stamp; and another 15 as a sideman.

Hazeltine returns to the fold with ‘Blues For Gerry’, his first Criss Cross leader date since ‘Inversions’ (2010). Recorded in a single six-hour session on December 1, 2022, it’s his third state of the art trio recital for Criss Cross with modern masters Washington and Farnsworth, following the equally accomplished albums ‘Perambulation’ (2005) and ‘Close to You’ (2003).

The album was recorded December 1, 2022 at the Samurai Hotel Recording Studio in NY. Recording engineer Mike Marciano also did the editing, mixing and mastering at Systems Two in NY.

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Javon Jackson, David Hazeltine, Tony Reedus, Paul Gill – Sugar Hill – The Music Of Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn (2007) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Javon Jackson, David Hazeltine, Tony Reedus, Paul Gill - Sugar Hill - The Music Of Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn (2007) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Javon Jackson, David Hazeltine, Tony Reedus, Paul Gill – Sugar Hill – The Music Of Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn (2007)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 54:08 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chesky Records

The acclaimed New York saxophonist Javon Jackson leads a celebration of the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, whose collaboration began in 1938 and continued until Strayhorn’s death in 1967. Jackson is joined for this session by arranger/pianist David Hazeltine, bassist Paul Gill and drummer Tony Reedus. Together they perform well-known compositions such as “Caravan,” “Chelsea Bridge,” and “Lotus Blossom,” as well as tunes that are not usually played by quartets such as “In My Solitude.” The two soloists, Jackson and Hazeltine explore the bluesier and moodier side of Ellington’s music as well as ballads like “Warm Valley” and slightly more up-tempo tunes like “In a Sentimental Mood.”
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David Hazeltine – The Time is Now (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

David Hazeltine – The Time is Now (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:19 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Smoke Sessions

We all have it: that nagging list of things we’ve been meaning to get to, projects we’ve been thinking about for years, goals that we just keep putting off for another day. With The Time Is Now, pianist/composer David Hazeltine decides to finally seize the moment and bring one of his long-delayed dream projects to fruition. The new album, due out October 26 via Smoke Sessions Records, finds one of the top pianists of his generation forging an impeccably swinging partnership with two other masters: bassist Ron Carter and drummer Al Foster.

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David Hazeltine, George Mraz Trio – Manhattan (2006) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

David Hazeltine, George Mraz Trio – Manhattan (2006)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:52 minutes | 1,37 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chesky Records

Manhattan is an album that captures the dynamic moods of the world’s greatest city as interpreted through the supple interplay of this skillful threesome. “Hazeltine, Mraz and Drummond have established an easy chemistry that hinges on their shared sense of time and conversational exchanges within the structure of each song,” according to the album’s liner notes. Hazeltine and Mraz are both no strangers to Chesky Records, having made their debuts for the label on Jon Faddis’1998 Remembrances CD/SACD and Phil Woods’ Here’s to My Lady CD/SACD, respectively.

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