Jazz Moods: An Intimate Evening

Jazz Moods: An Intimate Evening

<I>An Intimate Evening</I> is a set of three discs from Concord Records' budget-priced Jazz Moods series: <I>Dinner by Candlelight</I>, <I>Jazz by the Fire</I>, and <I>Jazz at Night's End</I> (and priced even lower in this set). It's really a sampler of the last 20 years of Concord's excellent jazz catalog, gathered here in one-hour sets that are somewhat indistinguishable groups of great ballads, other than that <I>Candlelight</I> has no vocals and <I>Night's End</I> does in fact include some classic late-night tunes ("'Round Midnight," "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning"). The Concord stable includes solid mainstream artists--such as Marian McPartland, Jim Hall, Ray Brown, and Mel Tormé--which means that while the music is very easy to listen to, it doesn't really qualify as "easy listening" (OK, <I>Candlelight</I> has a couple of slightly cheesy selections.) Looking for an inexpensive way to fill your CD changer with an evening's worth of gentle jazz? This will fit the bill. <I>--David Horiuchi</I>