Off jazz: 12 by Ordinarius

Ordinarius—a word-play after their musical director and arranger, Augusto Ordine—is the name of a vocal sextet faring from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Left to right: Maíra Martins, Augusto Ordine, Matias Corrêa, Fabiano Salek,
Beatriz Coimbra, Mateus Xavier, Rebeca Vieira.

Gil Evans recycles

Before the career-changing album that was Miles Ahead for both Miles Davis and Gil Evans, the latter was making a living out of odd jobs and small assignments. Like this arrangement of "Miss Brown to You" for Kent Harian, for instance (the only one by Evans in the album Echoes of Joy):

When Harian recorded his album, in December 1956, Evans was already hard at work writing for Miles Ahead, which would be released in October 1957. Only weeks before that release, he was in the studio, courtesy of Prestige—Miles's previous label—, to do Gil Evans & Ten, his first album as a leader, at age 45. One of its better known tracks is his reading of the bloody ballad "Ella Speed", with a classic solo by Steve Lacy, and this passage for the ensemble:

Kenny Wheeler (1930-2014)

Kenny Wheeler

After Kenny Wheeler passed away last Thursday, the outpouring of admiration and pure love for his music and himself as a person has been astonishing. I never met the man, although I saw him a few times playing live — the last one with an all-star cast at the London Jazz Festival 2012, another wonderful show of love, admiration and great music.

Wheeler is one of those characters that just don't fit in your typical jazz history. From the same generation as Clifford Brown, Bill Evans, Phil Woods, Bob Brookmeyer and all those guys, he was a Canadian who emigrated to the UK in 1952 (the beginning of the Gerry Mulligan-Chet Baker quartet, for instance). He was a late bloomer, his career moved back and forth from large ensemble compositions to free improvisation, not something you'd expect from such a retiring, quiet, sweet man, who once explained his method as "what I like doing best is writing sad tunes, and then letting wonderful musicians destroy them".