Freddie Hubbard Ready For Freddie UHQCD

Numbered, Limited Edition UHQCD!
Playable on any CD player, the Ultimate High Quality CD greatly surpasses all previous CDs before it!
Indianapolis-born trumpeter Freddie Hubbard demonstrated his exceptional talent with Blue Note Records with a series of notable albums he recorded in the early 1960s. Initially firmly rooted in hard bop, Hubbard began to expand his approach with his masterpiece "Ready For Freddie". "I'm most interested in a style similar to Coltrane's," Hubbard explained to the author of the liner notes, Nat Hentoff. Hubbard had recorded "Olé Coltrane" and "Africa/Brass" for Impulse with Coltrane on the Atlantic album earlier this year. Hubbard went on to explain: "I mean different ways of playing the changes to achieve a wider range of sounds." To paint with these colors, Hubbard put together a band that included three musicians from Coltrane's circle: bassist Art Davis, pianist McCoy Tyner and drummer Elvin Jones. This date also marked the first collaboration between Hubbard and Wayne Shorter, an amazingly original saxophonist and Hubbard's soon-to-be bandmate in The Jazz Messengers, when the trumpeter replaced Lee Morgan in Art Blakey's flagship band later that year.
The unique sextet on "Ready For Freddie" is rounded off by Bernard McKinney on the euphonium, which enriches the ensemble's sound palette. The album opens with Hubbard's lively piece "Arietis", a nod to his zodiac sign Aries, before moving into the sublime ballad "Weaver Of Dreams", a breathtaking performance by Hubbard in which both his brilliant tone and the impressive technical mastery of his instrument come into their own. After Shorter's "Marie Antoinette", the band pays homage to Charlie Parker with Hubbard's "Birdlike". The album ends with the expansive and explosive "Crisis," an original by Hubbard who wanted to capture the simmering tensions of the early 1960s.
In the course of the extremely popular "Blue Note 85th Anniversary Reissue Series", Universal Music Japan presents the sonically impressive remastering of this jazz classic by the legendary Kevin Gray, who is also responsible for the analog reissues of Blue Note US such as "Tone Poet" and "Classic Vinyl" - as a limited Japanese UHQCD with OBI Stripe. The original recording session for "Ready For Freddie" took place on August 21, 1961 at Rudy Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
UHQCD stands for Ultimate High Quality Compact Disc and is a joint development of the Japanese CD replication company Memory-Tech and the Audio Quality CD Company from Hong Kong. UHQCDs, unlike conventional CDs, are not pressed from polycarbonate, but cast from a photopolymer and cured with UV light. To protect the softer photopolymer from scratching, another layer of high-purity polycarbonate is applied. The combination results in a significantly reduced reflection of the laser light inside the CD and an unrivalled precise edge transition between pits and lands of the CD. UHQCDs are 100% compatible with normal CD players. Musically, the result is a sound that is strongly reminiscent of analog master tapes.
While Universal Music Japan's first UHQCD series relied on the DSD data of previous SHM-SACD releases, albums that had not previously been released as SHM-SACD are now being released with increasing popularity. Typically, the master tapes of the Universal Archive are re-converted to DSD for this purpose. UHQCDs are ideal for music lovers who want to get as close as possible to the sound of the recording, but do not have a SACD player.

Features:

• Numbered, Limited Edition
• Made in Japan
• Superior Crystal Sound
• Ultimate High Quality CD
• XRCD-Like Luxury Digipak
• Playable on conventional CD players

Musicians:

• Freddie Hubbard, trumpet
• Bernard McKinney, euphonium
• Wayne Shorter, tenor sax
• McCoy Tyner, piano
• Art Davis, bass
• Elvin Jones, drums

Selections:

1. Arietis
2. Weaver Of Dreams
3. Marie Antoinette
4. Birdlike
5. Crisis