Easy Street

1-CD digipak (4-plated) with 44-page booklet, 20 tracks. Total playing time approx. 61 minutes. 'Easy Street' gathers all 20 tracks Inge Brandenburg recorded with the Frankfurt Jazz Ensembles These songs certainly are some of the most carefully produced jazz recordings in the vocalist's entire career. At the Antibes Jazz Festival in July 1960, Inge Brandenburg was elected best jazz singer in Europe. But when she died in a Munich-Schwabing hospital on February 23, 1999 - only five days after her 70th birthday - she had become poor and almost forgotten. The recordings collected on this CD fill a painful gap in the documented work of one of the greatest singing talents coming out of the German jazz scene. The recordings were made between January 1959 and July 1961. At the time, Inge Brandenburg was living in Frankfurt/Main, where she was discovered during the 6th German Jazz Festival. It was at the same festival that the hr Jazz Ensemble was also presented to the public. This studio formation, built around the brothers Albert and Emil Mangelsdorff and saxophonist and arranger Joki Freund, consisted of some of the best musicians from the Frankfurt jazz scene. Regular recording sessions at Hessischer Rundfunk provided the basic financial security that allowed them to work as freelance musicians and to live for their art. In the 2011-released CD accompanying the documentary 'Sing! Inge, Sing! ' five of the titles were released for the first time. 'Easy Street' finally gathers all 20 tracks Inge Brandenburg recorded with the Frankfurt Jazz Ensembles and makes them publicly available more than 50 years after their creation. These songs certainly are some of the most carefully produced jazz recordings in the vocalist's entire career. Accompanied by various hr jazz ensembles with chamber-music-like sensitivity, her voice with all its expressiveness and nuances of sound can be heard with impressive clarity. Excellent arrangements written by Joki Freund and Pepsi Auer, and masterful improvisations of Albert and Emil Mangelsdorff, Joki Freund, Dusko Goykovich and others give many titles extra brilliance.