Jazz Library

Alyn Shipton is joined by Tom Perchard to select the highlights from trumpeter Booker Little's recorded catalogue. Before his death in 1961 aged 23, Little was seen as one of the brightest hopes of jazz in the 1950s, forging a new compositional and playing style that offered a way forward from bebop that was strikingly original.

Singer Christine Tobin guides Alyn Shipton through the jazz-oriented repertoire of Joni Mitchell, including her work with Wayne Shorter, Jaco Pastorius and Herbie Hancock. Mitchell often employed jazz musicians on her recordings, but she was also fascinated by Charles Mingus, making an album of his music shortly before his death.

Dave Liebman came to fame as the saxophonist in Miles Davis's 1970s band, but he has had a formidable career since the 1980s as a bandleader in his own right, often specialising on the soprano instrument, but also returning to the his first love, the tenor. He joins Alyn Shipton in front of an audience at Cheltenham Town Hall to select the highlights of his recordings.

In this Jazz Library, Dave Liebman, who was the Cheltenham Jazz Festival's artist in residence in 2009, joins Alyn Shipton to look back over his extensive catalogue of recordings, including free solo improvisations, reinterpretations of classical music, tributes to John Coltrane and interpretations of standards. A virtuoso musician who is also a leader in the world of jazz education, Liebman shows his mastery in a variety of settings from playing completely unaccompanied to working with a full-scale big band.

Eighty-one-year old Bob Wilber is one of the leading clarinettists and saxophonists in traditional jazz, and he joins Alyn Shipton to look back at the highlights of a career that began when Bob was a teenage pupil of the great Sidney Bechet. The programme covers recordings from the 1940s to the present day and includes Wilber's dramatic recreations of Ellington for the Francis Ford Coppola film The Cotton Club.

South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela joined Alyn Shipton to discuss his finest recordings.

For Hugh Masekela, jazz and political activism go hand in hand. As he guides Alyn Shipton through his recording career, we hear of his first band, the Jazz Epistles, cruelly cut short when the Sharpeville Massacre led to large public gatherings being banned on the eve of its first national tour. We follow him to London and New York, with his early American album Grrrr! and his London session Music Is Where The Heart Is with revolutionary saxophonist Dudu Pukwana. Hugh then traces his career as an exile through discs made in New York, and in Botswana, where he recorded during the years he was unable to enter South Africa. His music blends jazz and Afro-Pop, using the characteristic sounds of South African choirs and voices as essential ingredients alongside his distinctive trumpet and flugelhorn playing, creating music that always evokes his homeland, but never loses touch with the African-American jazz that inspired his vision of freedom.

Few families have produced three such exceptional musical brothers as Percy, Jimmy and Tootie Heath, a bassist, saxophonist and drummer who have worked at the highest level. On one of their last visits to London before Percy's death in 2005, Alyn Shipton talked to all three of them about their collective and individual careers in jazz, introducing not only the finest albums they made together, but their discs with other musicians as varied as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon and Wes Montgomery.

The Heath Brothers band was a legendary ensemble in jazz from the 1970s to the death of bassist Percy Heath in 2005. All three brothers, Percy, saxophonist Jimmy and drummer Tootie, were masters of their art, and there was a collective magic about their appearances together. But in this programme Percy also talks about his work with Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Quartet, Jimmy remembers his earliest records with John Coltrane when they were fellow members of Dizzy Gillespie's band, and Tootie recalls the thrill of accompanying Wes Montgomery and Dexter Gordon. We also hear their work together on the albums 'Triple Threat' and 'As We Were Saying'.

In a programme recorded at the Gateshead Jazz Festival 2009, Alyn Shipton is joined by saxophonist Joshua Redman to look back at his best recordings. These include his early quintets and quartets, his trios with organist Sam Yahel, right up to more recent albums, all of them marked out by Redman's consistent balance between exploration and instrumental virtuosity.

American singer Sheila Jordan joins Alyn Shipton in front of an audience at the Gateshead International Jazz Festival 2009 to select the highlights from her half-century as arguably one of the most adventurous and individual singers in jazz. The programme features her minimal settings and explorations of timbre and timing, from her 1960s classic Portrait of Sheila to her most recent recordings.

In a special tribute to drummer Louie Bellson, who died in February 2009, Alyn Shipton presents an archive interview with the man himself, in which he selects key records from his career. Including discs with Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong as well as albums by his own big band and by his wife of 37 years, Pearl Bailey.

British bassist Peter Ind joins Alyn Shipton to select the highlights from his long recording career, mainly on his own Wave label which he founded in the 1950s. As well as collaborations with such great American players as Duke Jordan, Warne Marsh and Lee Konitz, he explains his fondness for working in duo with guitarists or other bass players.