Greetings friends, I hope you are doing well. I've got a superb recommendation for you today in The Jazz Guitar Chronicles. 

On the Thanksgiving Holiday here in the US, my friend David asked me, "Do you have the 7 disc box set with Desmond and Bickert in Toronto?"

David knows that along with Jim Hall and Joe Pass, that Ed Bickert makes up my 'Holy Trinity' of favorite jazz guitarists. 

David told me, "There's a lot of previously unreleased cuts with Ed, and some with Rob McConnell on valve trombone. A must have!"

Paul Desmond – The Complete 1975 Toronto Recordings ($119 USD).

On David's recommendation, I of course immediately ordered the Mosaic Limited Edition box set (HERE).  

Officially the title for the box set is Paul Desmond – The Complete 1975 Toronto Recordings, but since this is the Jazz Guitar Chronicles, I have to point out that being the huge Ed Bickert fan that I am, for me the title is Paul Desmond & Ed Bickert – The Complete 1975 Toronto Recordings.

I sure am glad David told me about this box set. I've been playing it almost non-stop since it arrived on Tuesday. Thank you, David! 

Here's what Mosaic says about their Limited Edition Box set.

"The Limited Edition Box set includes:

• These recordings are an embarrassment of riches. With a rhythm section that suited his every need, a renewed Paul Desmond delivered some of the best performances of his career.
• Bassist Don Thompson was prescient enough to begin recording Paul Desmond’s two stints at the Bourbon Street Jazz Club in Toronto. Using a four-channel rig, he was able to capture the quartet with excellent clarity. He has now gone back to the original analog tapes to remix them for this set.
• The acclaimed journalist Doug Ramsey was one of Desmond’s closest friends and his biographer. He provides an insightful essay into Paul Desmond, the person as well as the artist and notes for these amazing sessions, half of which are unreleased.
• The booklet will include photographs from Bernie Senensky and the late Ron Hudson from performances by the quartet at the Bourbon Street Jazz Club in Toronto and at the Monterey Jazz Festival."

Paul Desmond & Ed Bickert – The Complete 1975 Toronto Recordings

When David stopped by on Thursday to teach me a jazz guitar lesson, afterwards we listened to the first CD from the Desmond & Bickert box set with the Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x CD player as the source, and the Triode Lab 45 EVO SET integrated amplifier providing the juice for the big Tannoy Westminster Royal SE loudspeakers. 

That Thursday listening session with David was one of those "Wow!" moments that you get every now and then when you have a fine audio system, and the combined quality of the music and the superb recording quality were breathtaking. 

Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x CD player (left), and Triode Lab 45 EVO SET integrated amplifier (right).

As I write this I'm listening with the Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x CD player as the source, and I've switched over to the Audio Note (UK) 300B Meishu Phono Silver Tonmeister Single-Ended-Triode integrated amplifier for providing the juice to power the big West's.

The Meishu is an über impressive integrated amplifier, and I love that it is available with a phono stage, although more about the phono stage in the Meishu later, as I didn't use it for this listening session to Desmond & Bickert CD box set.

The Meishu is the sort of integrated amplifier you can match with a source (or sources), a pair of good loudspeakers, and just retire from swapping in and out amplification components, focus on building your music library, of course adding the Paul Desmond & Ed Bickert – The Complete 1975 Toronto Recordings to your library, and living happily ever after.

Audio Note (UK) CD 2.1x/II & C D 4.1x CD players (left), 45 EVO & Meishu Tonmeister (right).

I'm still way below the 200 hour mark that Audio Note (UK) considers as the bedding-in period for everything in the Meishu to settle into its full performance level, but the Meishu is sounding superb both musically, and from a sound quality perspective.

Audio Note (UK) Meishu 300B Phono Silver Tonmeister integrated amplifier.

For me, the Paul Desmond & Ed Bickert – The Complete 1975 Toronto Recordings represent some of the greatest jazz ever recorded.

First of all, Ed Bickert is featured on 6 of the 7 discs in this box set (apparently Ed could not be there one evening), making this box set a shoo-in for inclusion in the Jazz Guitar Chronicles.

The Desmond & Bickert box set booklet written by Doug Ramsey is superb.

The included box set booklet is very informative and well written, and says this about Ed Bickert:

""Thompson had an assignment to capture Desmond's quartet for the A&M Horizon label. A&M issued the resulting album on vinyl, and later on CD, as The Paul Desmond Quartet Live. He recorded Desmond in March of 1975 and again in October and November of that year."

"Expanding on Bickert's compatibility with Desmond and on the guitarist's abilities in general, Thompson said, "Ed was famous for knowing all the tunes in all the keys. We had no music and never rehearsed. There were a couple of endings we discussed before going on, and Paul had a funny little cue that he'd play to let us know the next chorus would be stop-time."

"Other than that, we'd go on stage, he'd call a tune and the key, and we'd just play. These are possibly the best recordings there are of Ed Bickert. He made quite a few, but most of them were either as a sideman or under his own name with music arranged by someone else, so he was usually reading someone else's chords. Ed had an amazing knowledge of harmony and with no music to read he was free to play whatever harmonies came into his mind. All those beautiful chords he played were things that he had figured out and been playing since the 1960s."

The quote, "These are possibly the best recordings there are of Ed Bickert", immediately caught my eye being an enthusiast of Ed Bickert's jazz guitar playing, and not only that but all of the material I have listened to so far in the box set was recorded superbly well, and as Mosaic points out on their website, "He (bassist Don Thompson) has now gone back to the original analog tapes to remix them for this set," and I'll tell you what, Don did a fantastic job, both in his original recording of the sessions, but also remixing the analog tapes for this box set. 

If I counted correctly, twenty of the songs were released on previous albums, but thirty-one of the songs were previously unissued, so there's a lot of new and brilliant material here, and it is great to have all the material from the sessions in one box set, the Paul Desmond & Ed Bickert – The Complete 1975 Toronto Recordings.

This Limited Edition box set is really a treasure, as it includes some of the best jazz playing ever recorded, particularly for Ed Bickert fans like me, and it was recorded superbly well by bassist Don Thompson.

I might note that even though Paul Desmond – The Complete 1975 Toronto Recordings was a Limited Edition box set of 2500 albums, that Mosaic has kept the presses going, as my box set was number 2707 of 2500. I wouldn't count on the box sets being available forever though, so I recommend you buy it while you can. 

I should have mentioned this at the beginning, but you have Paul Desmond on alto saxophone, Don Thompson on bass, Jerry Fuller on drums, Ed Bickert on guitar, and Rob McConnell on valve trombone sitting in for Ed when he wasn't available, and each artist is recorded beautifully during the sessions at the Bourbon Street Jazz Club in Toronto. 

This is a brilliant box set of albums both musically and for the recording quality. The live nature of the recording venue means that you get to hear all those intimate little interactions with the audience, which makes me feel like I'm right there at the Bourbon Street Jazz Club, and the recording is one of those that suffuses my living room with the Club's acoustic, which makes listening a 'being there' experience.

Another benefit of this being a set of live recordings is that the spontaneous nature of the performances, and the ability of the musicians to be able to play as they were inspired comes through with aplomb, and you hear amazing jazz as a result. 

As a bonus, this is about as perfect of a recording in a live jazz club setting that one could hope for, and Don Thompson's four-track analog tape recordings are extremely well balanced, with the result being that the Bourbon Street Jazz Club has appeared in my living room every time I placed a CD from the box set on the transport of the Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x CD player.

Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x Level 3 CD player.

You get the idea, this box set is very, very, highly recommended! 

Ok, that's all for now. As always thanks for stopping by, and may the tone be with you!