This concert disc features Mr. Lee "Captain Fingers" Ritenour and his band performing live at the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles. Ritenour is a very, very accomplished guitar player that has studied both contemporary and classical guitar in his time and is well known as a top notch session player. His second album entitled "Captain Fingers", a nick name given to him by fellow studio musicians, enjoyed both commercial and critical success and established him as a solo performer of note. He has continued to record and tour throughout his career most recently with pianist and composer Bob James.
In this performance Ritenour is joined by many talented performers including Bob James, Ernie Watts, Anthony Jackson and Steve Lukather. The concert is divided into two volumes. Volume or part one features a more Brazilian Jazz flavour and the second a more traditional Jazz/Pop sound.
My favourite track is Etude which showcases Ritenour on nylon string guitar and Anthony Jackson on 6 string bass guitar. Lovers of guitar hero music may remember Cause We've Ended As Lovers which I first heard on Jeff Beck's album Blow by Blow. On this particular track Ritenour and Steve Lukather duke it out on electric guitar. Anyway, lovers of jazz are well catered for as Ritenour covers a few different styles on this disc.
The playlist for this particular performance is:
1. Night Rhythms | 10. Asa |
2. Harlequin | 11. 24th Street Blues |
3. Malibu | 12. Stolen Moments |
4. Up-Town | 13. Love Is The Key |
5. Preta Porte De Tafeta | 14. Better Than Anything |
6. Odile, Odila | 15. Everything's Gonna Be Alright |
7. Latin Lovers | 16. Restoration |
8. Etude | 17. Westchester Lady |
9. Cause We've Ended As Lovers | 18. Bahia Funk |
Presented full frame and not 16x9 enhanced this video transfer is not going to win any awards but is good enough to allow you to watch and listen without being distracted by a poor image. Overall the sharpness and detail levels revealed are merely adequate. Close shots are pretty good but middle or longer distance shots lack sharpness and detail. Basically the whole image is a bit soft but what can you expect, the concert appears to have been filmed using broadcast video cameras. The colours of this transfer are fine and skin tones are accurate enough. The black level is ok and shadow detail is perfectly acceptable.
Video noise in darker background areas of the screen is the most noticeable artefact of this transfer. It is easily seen but not at all distracting. There is also some minor aliasing and what looks like dot crawl around the stage lights. Both of these fall into the minor category.
The sole audio track on this disc is Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo encoded at a bit rate of 192kb/s. It is a solid enough transfer with good instrument separation and a fairly open soundstage. Stereo effects do occur with drums runs sometimes moving from left to right or a solo isolated in one particular channel.
The cross over circuit in my receiver did pass bass information to my subwoofer which added some depth to the bass guitar lines of Anthony Jackson and Brian Bromberg.
Extras are limited to a two page biography for Lee Ritenour.