Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

Jazz musicians have often turned to Cuba, one of the world’s hotbeds of rhythm, for inspiration--most notably Dizzy Gillespie. Canada’s Jane Bunnett fell in love with the island’s music more than 10 years ago, when the flutist and soprano saxophonist visited there with trumpeter Larry Cramer. A rising international jazz star, Bunnett and husband Cramer recently returned from Cuba with a valuable souvenir: Spirits of Havana, a prized collaboration with several top Cuban musicians. Some of the recording, featuring veteran singer Merceditas Valdés and percussionists Grupo Yoruba Andabo, is simply well-produced, traditional Afro-Cuban music. But such numbers as “Yo Siempre Oddara (Forever Strong...

A return to her jazzier side, Taming the Tiger finds Joni Mitchell, now 54, happy but hardly complacent. Featuring saxophonist Wayne Shorter (Weather Report) and drummer Brian Blade (Joshua Redman), the album includes sensuous, romantic numbers like “Love Puts On a New Face,” with its swirling keyboards and Mitchell’s pastel-shaded chords, and “The Crazy Cries of Love,” about a late-night tryst on a train bridge that she wrote with her boyfriend, Saskatoon songwriter Don Freed. But other songs, such as “Lead Balloon” and “No Apologies,” attack some of Mitchell’s favorite targets: corrupt lawyers and twofaced record executives. On the acerbic title track, she sings: “I’m a runaway from the re...

One of the world's pre-eminent record producers, Canada's Daniel Lanois stepped out from behind the controls in 1989 to release his own album. An auspicious debut, Acadie signalled the arrival of a promising new performer with a flair for moody, country-tinged rock. For the Beauty of Wynona, his follow-up album, reveals other facets of his artistry. Inspired by Winona, Ont., the town near Hamilton where Lanois grew up, the recording is full of songs that conjure up stark, sometimes haunting images. The title track, with its childhood memories of fishing and girls skipping double-dutch, and “Sleeping in the Devil's Bed,” a lazy honky-tonk number, have a shimmering, dreamlike quality. And ther...