(Post-Bop / Big Band / ACT) Vince Mendoza - Blauklang - 2008, FLAC (image+.cue), lossless

For jazz aficionados, composer/arranger Vince Mendoza's artisanship is a well-known entity. However, he's also enamored the works of pop-rock stars of note, including Joni Mitchell, Elvis Costello and Sheryl Crow. Mendoza is a master-craftsman who possesses a keen ear to complement his vivid imaginative powers, characteristics that are fastidiously transmitted throughout this rather wondrous 2008 release.
The English translation for the German album title is "blue sound," and emanates from a painting by German artist Ernst Wilhelm Nay (1902-1968). Mendoza's original compositions, sans Miles Davis' opening classic, "All Blues," duly paint a multihued musical portraiture that luminously intimates various shades of blue. Recorded at both a German studio and music festival, the artist employs some of the finest Euro-jazz instrumentalists along with guitarist Nguyen Le and drummer Peter Erskine, who round out the strings and horns based ensemble.
With lush textures, medium tempo swing vamps and multilayered arrangements, Mendoza conveys numerous shades of blue, especially on "All Blues," where supple horns provide counterpoint to Le's somewhat elusive and loosely based reckoning of the primary theme. In other regions of sound and scope, Mendoza implements buoyant undercurrents amid symphonic-like opuses.
Mendoza's "Ollie Mention" is constructed up from a hauntingly beautiful theme that features a simple melody and rippling strings passages, as Le ups the ante via his angular riffing atop the ensemble's layered choruses. "Movement II" of the six-part "Bluesounds" features French hornist Arkady Shilkloper's triumphant lines, performed above a flourishing background, while elsewhere the contrasting hues and shadings are abetted by Markus Stockhausen's velvety solo spot.
With four Grammy awards under his hat, Mendoza may well be in line for number five with this gleaming masterwork. ~ Glenn Astarita, AAJ

Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008
EAC extraction logfile from 7. July 2009, 15:01
Vince Mendoza / Blauklang
Used drive  : HL-DT-STDVD-ROM GDR8162B   Adapter: 1  ID: 0
Read mode               : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache      : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction                      : 102
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out          : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks   : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations       : Yes
Used interface                              : Installed external ASPI interface
Used output format              : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate                : 1024 kBit/s
Quality                         : High
Add ID3 tag                     : No
Command line compressor         : C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\FLAC\FLAC.EXE
Additional command line options : -6 -V -T "ARTIST=%a" -T "TITLE=%t" -T "ALBUM=%g" -T "DATE=%y" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%n" -T "GENRE=%m" -T "COMMENT=%e" %s -o %d
TOC of the extracted CD
     Track |   Start  |  Length  | Start sector | End sector
    ---------------------------------------------------------
        1  |  0:00.00 |  7:55.69 |         0    |    35693
        2  |  7:55.69 |  4:26.34 |     35694    |    55677
        3  | 12:22.28 |  4:56.38 |     55678    |    77915
        4  | 17:18.66 |  5:56.49 |     77916    |   104664
        5  | 23:15.40 |  7:30.13 |    104665    |   138427
        6  | 30:45.53 |  2:58.06 |    138428    |   151783
        7  | 33:43.59 |  5:59.54 |    151784    |   178762
        8  | 39:43.38 |  5:21.62 |    178763    |   202899
        9  | 45:05.25 |  6:02.45 |    202900    |   230094
       10  | 51:07.70 |  4:53.48 |    230095    |   252117
       11  | 56:01.43 |  7:32.54 |    252118    |   286071
Range status and errors
Selected range
     Filename C:\eac\Vince Mendoza - Blauklang.wav
     Peak level 94.4 %
     Range quality 100.0 %
     Test CRC 060D46FB
     Copy CRC 060D46FB
     Copy OK
No errors occurred
End of status report