In the late 1950s and early 1960s, New York City was the focal point for myriad jazz styles. Hard bop, cool jazz, trad jazz and nascent third stream and avant garde styles found a home in the city's eclectic clubs, bars, and ballrooms. The records that were recorded in New York during this influential period make up perhaps the greatest collective offerings in the jazz canon, regardless of style: Miles Davis' Round About Midnight, Milestones, and Miles Ahead, Art Blakey's Moanin', Lee Morgan's The Sidewinder, Duke Ellington's Money Jungle, Oliver Nelson's The Blues And The Abstract Truth, Horace Silver's Song For My Father, Bill Evans' Undercurrent, Eric Dolphy's Out To Lunch, John Coltrane's Giant Steps and Blue Train, Charles Mingus' Ah Um, and Sonny Rollins' Saxophone Colossus are a veritable, musical Mt. Olympus that has yet to be equaled.

Listening to these recordings individually or as an evening's blowing session is to take a walk through time, through New York's then black and white world of non-air conditioned subways, 52nd Street caverns, bustling Time Square neon showcases and its accompanying freak show world.

Steve Allee's soundtrack for the film, New York In The Fifties, creates a mirror image of the city's jazz mood of the period, his small combo scenes drenched in post bebop, pre-hard bop styles. Oddly enough, Allee's most well known credits include populist fare like the soundtracks for Friends, NYPD Blue, and Dharma And Greg, contemporary pabulum for empty-headed viewing.

Steve Allee
"Theme From New York In The Fifties" (mp3)
from "Music from the Film "New York in the Fifties""
(Owl Studios)

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Steve Allee
"Art's Groove" (mp3)
from "Music from the Film "New York in the Fifties""
(Owl Studios)

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Steve Allee
"Kerouac" (mp3)
from "Music from the Film "New York in the Fifties""
(Owl Studios)

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Fieldwork feat. Vijay Iyer, Steve Lehman & Tyshawn Sorey: Door: From New York in the '50s to the future of New York jazz, this incredible trio led by groundbreaking pianist Vijay Iyer pushes jazz notions on Door. Progressive leaders in their own rights, Lehman (saxophone) and Sorey (drums) aid Iyer in deconstructing jazz math with a wild cut-and-paste esthetic. Like a musician using Pro Tools software to dissect and reassemble their performance--tweaking, sorting and rearranging as their ears imagine it, Fieldwork works a wide array of sounds, turning dense angles into wide open vistas. Incredible music for the brave of heart and mind.

Fieldwork feat. Vijay Iyer, Steve Lehman & Tyshawn Sorey
"After Meaning" (mp3)
from "Door"
(Pi Recordings)

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Fieldwork feat. Vijay Iyer, Steve Lehman & Tyshawn Sorey
"Ghost Time" (mp3)
from "Door"
(Pi Recordings)

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