Mr. Ho's Orchestrotica - two albums

Artist:  Mr. Ho’s Orchestrotica 
Albums:  The Unforgettable Sounds of Esquivel / Third River Rangoon
Released: 2010 / 2011
Quality: mp3 CBR 192
Size: 42 / 86 MB

”The music of Mexican composer and arranger Juan Garcia Esquivel—often referred to with the exclamatory Esquivel!—has been described as Space Age pop, cocktail jazz and lounge music. Whatever it's called, Esquivel's music is happy music —an eccentric but optimistic take on standards and originals, incorporating the newest musical technologies of the '60s. On The Unforgettable Sounds of Esquivel Mr Ho's Orchestrotica presents eleven faithfully reproduced Esquivel arrangements, in just 30 minutes, and gives rise to one simple question. When will there be more?... Mr Ho's Orchestrotica breathes fresh life into these marvelously odd arrangements, with a clear understanding of just what their creator intended them to do. The Unforgettable Sounds of Esquivel is music for pleasure: a happy, bouncy puppy of an album that just wants to play and have fun.” ~ ~by Bruce Lindsay at allaboutjazz.com

“The "Mr. Ho" of Mr. Ho's Orchestrotica is vibraphonist Brian O'Neil, who has put together a vibraphone quartet, also featuring flute, percussion and bass, for Third River Rangoon. The music, dubbed "exotica," drifts back and forth across the less than distinct border between third stream chamber jazz and classical, with hints of world music influenced by a tropical island Tiki god thrown in for good measure. Mr. Ho's previous exotica release explored the artistry of Mexican composer Juan Garcia Esquivel on The Unforgettable Sounds of Esquivel, with a 23-piece ensemble, the music described as a "happy, bouncy puppy of an album." Third Stream Rangoon takes the sound into a spacey but much more introspective area, with a murky, dreamy atmosphere fashioned from the melding of the vibraphone's ringing sustain with the deep, glowingly rich tone of Geni Skendo's bass and c flutes. The inspirations for the music—eight of the eleven tunes written by Mr. Ho—are about as esoteric and off the wall as it gets: A twenty foot-tall stone statue sentry at the former Aku-Aku Restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts ("Lonesome Aku Fisherman's Wife"); Albanian drone singing ("Phoenix, Goodbye"); the Bulgarian kopanitsa ("Autumn Digging Dance"); and the "Allegretto" from Shostakovich's 10th Symphony ("Moai Thief")” .  ~by Dan MacLenaghan at allaboutjazz.com

Salah Ragab & The Cairo Jazz Band (2006) -Egyptian Jazz 1966-1973 (vinyl rip)

Artist: Salah Ragab & The Cairo Jazz Band
Albums: Egyptian Jazz 1968-1973
Released: 2006
Quality: mp3 CBR 320 (vinyl rip)
Size: 91 MB

Drummer and multi-instrumentalist Salah Ragab was a central figure in the history of jazz in Egypt. A sometime collaborator with Sun Ra, Ragab founded the Cairo Jazz Band in 1968, the same year that he became the head of the Egyptian Military Music Department. The Cairo Jazz Band was Egypt's first big band, mixing American jazz with North African music, combining jazz instrumentation and musical style with indigenous melodies and instruments, like the nay (bamboo flute) and the baza (ramadan drum). Such musical cross-fertilization was not unusual in itself; American musicians from Sun Ra to Yusef Lateef had long been fascinated by the music of Islam and North Africa, incorporating both the instruments and musical forms of the Fertile Crescent into their work. But Salah Ragab’s music presents a topsy-turvied perspective, a view from the other side of the musical equation of West meets Middle East.
More importantly, however, The Cairo Jazz Band seriously swings. While there have been some tantalizing tidbits from Ragab available in the past, such as the Sun Ra Arkestra Meets Salah Ragab in Egypt release on Leo Records, this reissue is the first time such a wide variety of Salah Ragab and the Cairo Jazz Band's music has been made available outside Egypt. Collecting material from 1968-73, Egyptian Jazz is published by the UK imprint Art Yard, who have hitherto exclusively released an outstanding series of vinyl-only Sun Ra recordings. It's no surprise, then, that there's much here to appeal to Sun Ra aficionados, but with songs like the swaggeringly cocksure “Egyptian Strut” and blow-outs like the scorching “Ramadan in Space Time” and the ultra-groovy “Neveen,” this record more than stands on its own. As head of the Egyptian Military Music Department, Ragab had access to some of Egypt's finest instrumentalists, and he drew deep from this pool of musical talent. The ensemble playing is top-notch throughout and there are stand-out solos on flute, sax, and keyboards, notably on the percussion-heavy "Neveen." Susanna Bolle, Dusted

Francy Boland (1976) -Blue Flame / Red Hot / White Heat

Artist: Francy Boland
Album: Blue Flame / Red Hot / White Heat
Released: 2008 (originally released in 1976 as 3 separate albums)
Label: MPS Records
Quality: mp3 CBR 320
Size: 261 MB

François Boland (6 November 1929 in Namur Belgium – 12 August 2005 in Geneva) was a classically trained Belgian jazz composer and pianist.
He first gained notice in 1949 and worked with Belgian jazz greats like Bobby Jaspar, and in 1955 he joined Chet Baker's quintet. Moving to the US, he began arranging for Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman and Dizzy Gillespie, and set up an octet with drummer Kenny Clarke before returning to Europe and becoming Kurt Edelhagen's chief arranger. In 1961, based around a rhythm section featuring Clarke, Jimmy Woode and himself, he founded The Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band, which rapidly became one of the most noted Big Bands assembled outside the United States. After it broke up in 1972 he concentrated on composing.
He lived in Europe, primarily Switzerland, from 1976 and did musical arrangements for Sarah Vaughan among others. He was also part of One World, One Peace, an effort involving Pope John Paul II. He died in 2005. more info

Ted Heath (2008) -Swing Is King, Vol. 1 & 2

Artist: Ted Heath
Album: Swing Is King, Vol. 1 & 2
Released: 2008
Quality: mp3 CBR 320
Size: 184 MB

Ted Heath was one of the most famous big-band leaders in Great Britain of the 1950s. His bands played modernized swing music that was always danceable but occasionally had worthwhile solos played in the tradition. Heath started out playing tenor horn before he switched to trombone when he was 14. He spent a period playing as a street musician and then was discovered by Jack Hylton, who hired him for his band. Heath had long stints as a sideman with a variety of top dance bands, including ensembles led by Bert Firman (1924-1925), Hylton again (1925-1927), Ambrose (1928-1936), Sydney Lipton (1936-1939), and Geraldo (1939-1944). Heath began leading his own big band in 1944 and, through regular appearances on the radio, tours, and concerts, he soon became a household name in England. The innovations of bebop were largely ignored in favor of playing swing-oriented charts, although some of Heath's soloists (particularly Ronnie Scott, Danny Moss, Don Rendell, and Kenny Baker) became notable as jazz players. Heath, whose band was always of high musicianship and used "Listen to the Music" as its theme song, also became well known in the United States, visiting the U.S. several times starting in 1956. His orchestra recorded quite frequently starting in 1944 (mostly for Decca and London), including ten albums in 1959 alone. Even after Ted Heath's death in 1969, the big band continued performing and recording with a live concert cut as late as 1977.~ Scott Yanow, Rovi