Brad Mehldau on Mezzo Tonight

If you live in a country where you can get Mezzo, the French classical/jazz TV station, there’s a great program tonight. Two concerts by Brad Mehldau, my favorite jazz musician. The first is a solo gig, and the second with his trio.

I have all of Brad Mehldau’s albums, and simply love his music and his playing. If you like piano jazz, and get this channel, tune in tonight.

If you’re not familiar with his music, you can listen to some samples here.

He has a new album, Highway Rider, due out in two weeks.

One Good Thing About iTunes…

…I can go through all my Grateful Dead albums and look at the last played date, and find which ones I haven’t listened to in a long time. Dick’s Picks 1, probably the one I listened to most on CD, being the first one of the series I bought back whenever, hasn’t been spun since 2004!

Cue it up!

Four Amazon.com Classical Music MP3 Bargains

I spotted four nice bargains on Amazon today, for all you classical music fans:

Alfred Brendel Beethoven piano sonatas, 10-disc set, $36. I just bought this set on disc, and it’s quite good, though a couple of the sonatas are live recordings, with applause before and after.

Holmboe complete symphonies, 6-disc set, $17.98. A 20th century composer. I like his string quartets, but don’t know these works.

Mozart piano sonatas by Richard Brautigam, a 6-disc set for $17.98. I have this set, and like it very much. It’s played on fortepiano (an older version of the piano which was played back in the 18th and 19th century).

Carl Nielsen symphonies, etc., 5-disc set for $17.98. I don’t know these works very well.

Enjoy!

Some Amazon.com MP3 Classical Bargains (and One Jazz Bargain)

I’ve spotted several MP3 bargains on Amazon.com in the past couple of days:

Complete Beethoven String Quartets by the Borodin Quartet, on Chandos: $17.98 for 8 CDs worth of music.

English Music for Viols by Frewwork, on Virgin: 5 CDs of viola da gamba music for $9.49.

Italian Secular Cantatas by Gerard Lesne, on Virgin: 5 CDs of music by Scarlatti, Handel, etc. for $9.49.

And a jazz bargain:

Rarum Box Set 2, 12 CDs of classic ECM jazz albums, by Pat Metheny, dave Holland, Carla Bley, Paul Motian, and more, for $18.06.

Miles Davis for Christmas?

Buy from Amazon.com | Amazon UK | Amazon FR

As a music fan, I am a bit of an omnivore. I love classical music, the Grateful Dead, punk rock and jazz. My tastes are varied, but there’s a heck of a lot of music I really don’t know well. I often take advantage of the Christmas releases – big box sets and discounted collections – to fill in the gaps in my musical knowledge.

I hadn’t yet seen anything that tempted me for this year, until this evening, when, on Amazon.fr, I came across this box set of Miles Davis’ output for Columbia, with 52 albums on 70 CDs. (Each album is presented as it was originally, so double LPs are on two CDs.) I admit to not knowing Miles Davis very well. I have Kind of Blue (which I love), the Silent Way sessions (which is brilliant ambient music) and have heard some of his later music, but I’ve never owned many of his discs. I love the sound he gets from his trumpet, though some of what I’ve heard of his music is a bit noisy for my taste.

Nevertheless, I may put this on my Christmas list. It’s relatively cheap – EUR 161, or $328 for the set – and it’ll give me an overview of a magnificent career in music that deserves more attention. If you’re a jazz fan, this may be the right Christmas gift for you as well.

Today’s Amazon.com Classical MP3 Bargain

Michael Gielen’s Mahler symphony set, 13 CDs for $17.98. I’m not sure whether this is a good set – it’s gotten some good reviews – but it’s certainly a great price!

Update: Amazon spotted it; it’s $67.99 now. Well, it was good while it lasted…

Yo-Yo Ma 90-disc Box Set; Cheaper at Amazon France

Yo-Yo Ma – or more correctly, Sony, is celebrating the cellist’s 30 years of career with a mammoth box set, containing the 90 discs he has recorded. Unlike most classical box sets these days, this one is very, very expensive. Limited to 7,500 copies, it is selling in the US for an MSRP of $790; Amazon is selling it for $710. Interestingly, it is much cheaper in France, where Amazon is selling it for EUR 400 (after taking off the VAT, that comes to about $500 at today’s exchange rate). This is not something I’m interested in, though at $100 I’d certainly buy it.

In any case, if you’re interested, you can get it from Amazon FR, as they have it in stock. And if you buy it with my link, Amazon will give me a nice kickback at no cost to you. Or you can buy it from Amazon.com…

Amazon.com Huge Classical Box Set Sale

Amazon.com is running a huge classical box set sale featuring hundreds of sets from EMI and Universal labels, as well as DVDs. It’s almost as if they finally realized that the pressure on prices in the business – evidenced by prices practiced by labels such as Naxos and Brilliant Classics – was no longer to be ignored. With more than one hundred sets at 30-50% off, this is a good time to fill your music library with some of those sets you’ve long wanted but always put off buying.

This doesn’t seem to be a “while supplies last” sale; many of the items are out of stock, but show dates when they will be in stock. It’s possible that the labels are reducing inventory, but whatever the reason, there are some real gems in this sale.