News

January 3, 2024, is the 105th anniversary of Herbie Nichols' birth. We are very excited to celebrate his birthday by making the first six songs available from our Herbie Nichols Centennial Project: 24 previously unrecorded Herbie Nichols compositions, performed on solo piano. In 2019, Herbie's centennial year, we had 23 different pianists record solo versions of these songs at the...

December 15th, 2023, was the 70th anniversary of Kenny Dorham's first recording date as a leader. This "Kenny Dorham Quintet" album includes the first studio recording of An Oscar For Oscar, an intricate bebop blues head in that classic K.D. style. We have a lead sheet that reflects this version, as well as a combined melody and solo transcription with...

December 9th, 10th, and 11th are the anniversaries of important recording sessions by three of our composers; five songs (and one arrangement) from these sessions are new to jazzleadsheets.com. Bobby Watson recorded "Present Tense" on these dates in 1991; this album was the debut of trumpeter Terell Stafford. From this album we have At The Crossroads, a bright-toned medium swinger...

December 4, 2023, is the 45th anniversary of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers’ recording session for the album “Reflections In Blue.” James Williams’ title track Reflections In Blue, an iconic Blakey shuffle, was already on jazzleadsheets.com; four more songs from this session are now available as well. These include another shuffle by Williams: (What Do You Say,) Dr. “J”...

November 13 is the anniversary of a recording session by Bobby Watson; "Love Remains," a quartet album featuring Bobby with John Hicks on piano, Curtis Lundy on bass, and Marvin "Smitty" Smith on drums, was recorded 37 years ago. We have six songs available from this album. The Mystery Of Ebop is the most challenging, full of shifts in tempo...

November 3, 2023, is the 30th anniversary of one of the recording dates for "Midwest Shuffle," a live album by Bobby Watson with his Horizon quintet. Three songs from this album are newly available on jazzleadsheets.com. Mabel Is Able is an exciting rhythmic challenge: samba in 7/4, alternated with occasional measures of 4/4 and 3/4 within the form. A full...

The brilliant pianist/composer Renee Rosnes has some important recording anniversaries coming up through the end of the year. We'll be introducing more of her great music that you can add to your repertoire, starting with Chasing Spirits and The Gift.

We're particularly excited to add trumpeter/vocalist Oran "Hot Lips" Page to jazzleadsheets.com's list of composers. Page was one of the master soloists of the Swing Era, and a pioneer of the "jump blues" style. The four songs we have available come from a sextet session for the Commodore label, recorded on March 8, 1944; all are blues at different tempos...

Three composers new to jazzleadsheets.com are all trumpeters-- two contemporary and one from an earlier era. We've had Brian Lynch featured on the website before with songs from his "Unsung Heroes" project, but now we finally have some of his own compositions available. Three of these come from his 1995 quartet album "Keep Your Circle Small," the very first release...

jazzleadsheets.com now has one thousand songs available! Bringing us to that number are eleven songs by five newly added composers, covering a wide range of styles and dates. Two of these composers are tenor saxophonists who have sometimes been overlooked because they spent most of their careers playing in big bands; each recorded only one LP as a leader. Tenor...