Jazz Moods: An Intimate Evening

An Intimate Evening is a set of three discs from Concord Records' budget-priced Jazz Moods series: Dinner by Candlelight, Jazz by the Fire, and Jazz at Night's End (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 Candlelight has no vocals and Night's End 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, Candlelight 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. --David Horiuchi