Freddie Hubbard Breaking Point! 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. Although he appeared on some of the label's most revolutionary avant-garde jazz records, including Ornette Coleman's "Free Jazz" and John Coltrane's "Ascension," Freddie Hubbard's own albums tended to be more mainstream. Few albums capture the trumpeter's impressive range and versatility as much as "Breaking Point!", recorded in May 1964, shortly after Hubbard left Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers to form his own band. On this 6-song set with 5 original compositions by Hubbard, his new quintet – with James Spaulding on alto saxophone and flute, Ronnie Mathews on piano, Eddie Khan on bass and Joe Chambers on drums – moves confidently through a wide stylistic spectrum. In the breathtaking title song alone, the band effortlessly switches from free improvisation to a playful calypso and back again. The rest of the program includes modal jazz ("Far Away"), blues ("Blue Frenzy") and breathtakingly beautiful ballads (Chambers' "Mirrors") and forms one of the most remarkable albums in Hubbard's impressive Blue Note oeuvre.
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 "Breaking Point!" took place on May 7, 1964 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
• James Spaulding, alto sax, flute
• Ronnie Matthews, piano
• Eddie Khan, bass
• Joe Chambers, drums

Selections:

1. Breaking Point
2. Far Away
3. Blue Frenzy
4. D Minor Mint
5. Mirrors