DVD of the Day - "Hubert Laws: Live"

DVD of the Day

Hubert Laws: "Live" (Spirit Productions) 2006

Featuring Sonny Rollins, Chick Corea, Bill Watrous, Lenny White, Stanley Clarke, George Benson, Freddie Hubbard, McCoy Tyner, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Claude Bolling, Bobby Lyle, Alphonse Mouzon, Peter Sprague, Airto Moreira, John Beasley, John Leftwich, Ralph Penland, Onaje Murray et al.
Subtitled "30-Year Video Retrospective", it includes performances in Brazil (a great take on Victor Feldman's "Rio" at the 1996 Free Jazz Festival), Germany ("Wildfire"), USA (the "Red Hot & Cool Series" hosted by Nancy Wilson and an appearance at the "Johnny Carson Show", as well as a segment of the "DownBeat 1975 Readers Poll" concert), and Asia.
In Japan, there's a stunning rendition of Clare Fischer's "Pensativa" on piccolo - the original John Murtaugh arrangement heard on the CD issues of "Wild Flower" on Atlantic and "The San Francisco Concert" on CTI - as well as the premire live performance of Harold Blanchard's "Flute Concertino" with Laws backed by the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hiroshi Koizumi.
In Osaka, Laws also joins Sonny Rollins in another symphonic concert with Finnish conductor Heikki Sarmanto. They play "Falling in Love with Love", "Mack the Knife" plus an unbelievable piccolo/tenor sax duet on Rollins' own "Airegin", magnificently recorded by Laws on the 2-LP set "In The Beginning" (for CTI in 1974) as a duo with drummer Steve Gadd.