Straight up this is hardcore classic jazz - ensemble instruments only, few vocal pieces.
It's a live recording of the Montreaux Jazz Festival in Switzerland dated July 13th, 1999. The Festival is one that is famous for highlighting emerging talent.
It is a made for TV production and it runs a long 124 minutes representing a lot of music.
It is expertly produced with a slick, flawless quality that is fairly uncommon among TV to DVD productions.
The artists are fairly obscure but that does not detract from the fact that they don't seem to put a foot wrong. They are also a highly co-operative and complementary grouping with a excellent fusion of styles.
Tracklisting: Bob James Trio - Mind Games, Mark Turner - Old Folks, Kenny Garrett Quartet - Wayne's Thang, Larry Carlton - Cold Duck Time, Kirk Whalum - Soweto, Kevin Mahogany - Yesterday I Had The Blues, Rick Braun, Larry Carlton, Kenny Garrett, Boney James, Kirk Whalum - Always There, Boney James - All Night Long, Rick Braun - Notorious, Gabriela Anders - Fire Of Love, George Duke - Brazilian Love Affair, Fourplay - Four, Fourplay, Rick Braun, Boney James,Kirk Whalum - Westchester Lady, Fourplay, Rick Braun, George Duke, Boney James, Kirk Whalum - Watermelon Man.
Video is of very high quality. It is 1.33:1 and hard to fault. Excellent rendition of colours, skin tones and instruments. Brass intruments have that sparkle, wood instruments have that rich woody texture. It is tightly focussed on the stage rarely moving to the audience. The stage is flooded by blue tinged spotlights so that tends to imbue the picture with a blue cast. That tends to cause very slight colour bleed on the edges where very high contrast is present however you see that a lot on TV productions so it's barely noticeable.
There are three audio tracks, a Dolby 5.0 448k/s track, a dts 5.0 768k/s track and a Linear PCM Stereo track at 1,536k/s.
All are of quite excellent quality with unique characteristics that would tend to suit a certain personal preference.
The Dolby track is quite good with what I feel is the most natural 'live' feel. The surrounds are of reasonable level however compared to the other tracks, fidelity suffers a bit. The instruments sound a bit thinner, hollower but not to the extent as I've seen or heard on other discs. It holds its own.
The dts track has better fidelity however it has highly exaggerated surrounds leading to a certain 'fakeness'. Thankfully the audience is largely silent throughout. It does have the most musical sounding track with the piano being quite outstanding. It seems to capture every part of the keystroke from the initial strike to the string vibrato.
I would argue that in some instances it may be even better than the PCM track due to the fact that it is 20-bit over the PCM's 16-bit word attribute.
Both tracks limit the surrounds to mostly ambience during the music. Both have a slightly artificial frontstage due to the use of Dolby and dts front steering.
The Linear PCM track has excellent front soundstage and instrument fidelity yet almost no 'live' feel as the audience does not seem to be there. Excellent left/right 'feel' but zero front/rear 'feel'. If you've heard a CD lately, this one will remind you of that.
True to form, there are no extras except for some weblinks you probably won't visit if you pop the disc into your computer.
