Promise comes along every so often, but it is very rare for a jazz singer to emerge on the international stage in full-blown glory; now comes Frank Senior with promise well and truly fulfilled—on his debut recording Listening In The Dark With Frank Senior due out on Smalls Records this October 14th. This one will stop you in your tracks, with the feeling you’re hearing for the first time someone famous they forgot to tell you about.

Blind since birth, Senior knows the world by its sound. He knows the city by its pulse. He knows you for what you have to say. He knows the music of love. And he returns sound back to the world in vocal kind, telling it like it is, and saying it like he means it. His golden voice obliges him, and his thorough training gives him a bedrock foundation for a very soulful sound.

He’s joined here by a stellar band, featuring saxophone great Bob Mover, guitarist Saul Rubin, pianist Richard Clements, bassists Eric Lemon and Hassan Shakur, drummer Jacob Melchior, and violinist Efrat.

Senior himself is no overnight sensation. He was a music student at NYU in the 1970s and has been singing for many years, developing a loyal following along the way. But you’d have to have been alert to catch him until now. Senior is a man of the people, someone who is used to bringing his trade around the upper east and west sides of Manhattan, where he has standing invitations from a multitude of restaurants and clubs to perform impromptu. Senior has a special ability to reach out to people of all kinds in a city notorious for its tough audiences, and to get them to forget their cares for a while. His commanding performance is a part of what makes this record so special. Thanks to the perfectionist in him, we’re left with no doubt that a major vocal force has arrived.

Multisaxophonist and composer Chris Byars will be touring Eastern Europe and parts of the Middle East with his new quartet from February 23^rd until March 21, 2007. Byars will be acting as a designated cultural emissary for the US Department of State, the modern day continuation of the “Jazz Ambassador” legacy that began with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie, and is now run under the aegis of the American Music Abroad program and administered through Jazz At Lincoln Center. Byars and his associates will perform and hold workshops in Slovakia, Saudi Arabia, Cyprus, Montenegro, and Slovenia. The month-long itinerary is densely packed with dozens of concerts and numerous workshops, extending the reach of jazz and democracy to thousands of enthusiastic music lovers.

The tour will feature the new Chris Byars quartet performing some of Byars’ most creative musical works to date. The music is featured on Byars’ newest recording due out March 10, 2007 entitled Jazz Pictures At An Exhibition of Himalayan Art (srcd-0032). In many ways, this record is Byars’ love letter to the world, inspired in part by his previous world tour with master bassist Ari Roland during Roland’s 2007 tenure as a designated Jazz Ambassador. Ari Roland rejoins Byars this year, along with trombone luminary John Mosca, director of the legacy Vanguard Jazz Orchestra and distinguished educator, and drummer Stefan Schatz. The album features nine new compositions, each inspired by a work of Himalayan Art from the historic collection of the Rubin Museum in New York. The works were originally commissioned as a part of the “Harlem In The Himalayas” series run by the museum. The music is highly creative, exploring a number of unusual forms while remaining faithful to the idea of jazz. The record will be pressed into the service of musical diplomacy and given out to scores of participants in the course of the tour as a lasting memento.

We are proud to be participating in these tours, and feel that jazz is one of the strongest proponents of real democracy, able to capture the hearts of people of all races and creeds around the world.

Congratulations to all artists whose works were given recognition at the end of 2007!

Zaid Nasser – Escape From New York

Best Debut of 2007
Zan Stewart, The Newark Star-Ledger

Best Debut of 2007
Thomas Conrad, The Village Voice

Best Ten of 2007
Andrew Scott, Coda Magazine

Best Ten of 2007
David A. Orthmann, All About Jazz

2007 Honorable Mention, Editors’ Choice, All About Jazz

Best Ten of 2007
Derek Taylor, Dusted Features Magazine

“The Smalls label is still low on radar of most jazz listeners, this despite several euphonic coups, chief among them the stewardship of deceased bebop doyen Frank Hewitt’s recorded legacy. Producer Luke Kaven isn’t shy about expounding on unsung talent and in addition to sheparding new releases by the likes of erudite saxophonists Ned Goold and Chris Byars he also pressed his promoter’s acumen in the service of one Zaid Nasser. Nasser’s back-story, full of colorful character details like a glass eye and several years spent as an expatriate in Armenia, is the usual one of a great talent gone largely ignored. He’s since departed these shores again, this time for Dubai, and while there’s no telling when he’ll return, at least he left behind a debut album, one prophetically titled Escape From New York.”

Chris Byars - Photos in Black, White and Gray

Best Ten of 2007
Martin V. Johnson, The Village Voice

Best Ten of 2007
Tom Hull, The Village Voice

“Referencing Gigi Gryce’s alto and Lucky Thompson’s tenor, Byars finds new niches in old bebop, making you wonder whether postbop wasn’t premature.”

Omer Avital – Room To Grow

Best Ten of 2007
Tom Greenland, The Village Voice

Best Ten of 2007
Jeff Stockton, All About Jazz

Best Ten of 2007
David A. Orthmann, All About Jazz

Best Ten of 2007
Nathan Dorward, Coda Magazine

2007 Honorable Mention, Editors’ Choice, All About Jazz

Charles Davis – Land of Dreams

Best Ten of 2007
Zan Stewart, The Newark Star-Ledger

Gil Coggins – Better Late Than Never

Best Ten of 2007
Owen Cordle, The News & Observer

“A first-generation bebopper who never achieved the fame of his contemporaries, the late pianist Coggins has a semi-minimalist style full of dark, tart chord voicings and playful accents. The reflective side of bebop has rarely sounded better.”

Ari Roland – And so I lived in old New York…

Best Ten of 2007
Will Smith, Jazz Times

Sacha Perry – Not Brand X

Best Ten of 2007
Will Smith, Jazz Times

Best Ten of 2007
Duck Baker, Coda Magazine