Jazz Moods: Intimate Evening
An Intimate Eveningis a set of three discs from Concord Records' budget-pricedJazz Moodsseries:Dinner by Candlelight,Jazz by the Fire, andJazz at Night's End(and priced even lower in this set). It's really a sampler of the last 20 years of Concord's excellent jazz catalog, gathered here in one-hour sets that are somewhat indistinguishable groups of great ballads, other than thatCandlelighthas no vocals andNight's Enddoes in fact include some classic late-night tunes ("'Round Midnight," "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning"). The Concord stable includes solid mainstream artists--such asMarian McPartland,Jim Hall,Ray Brown, andMel Tormé--which means that while the music is very easy to listen to, it doesn't really qualify as "easy listening" (OK,Candlelighthas a couple of slightly cheesy selections.) Looking for an inexpensive way to fill your CD changer with an evening's worth of gentle jazz? This will fit the bill.--David Horiuchi