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REISSUES : In Brief

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* * * * Dizzy Gillespie and Arturo Sandoval, “To a Finland Station,” Pablo. Gillespie and the Cuban trumpeter, meeting by chance in 1982 in Helsinki, put this grand-slam session together overnight, with spectacular results, and with first-rate support by three Finns on piano, bass and drums. It is hard to discern who is playing when (the notes by Norman Granz fail to inform us); the muted solo on “Wheatleigh Hall” is clearly Gillespie, and it’s obviously Sandoval when you hear twanging rubber-band effects played by Dizzy on an instrument inexplicably known as the jew’s-harp. Five Gillespie originals include the delightful hop-skip of “And Then She Stopped,” the quasi-Cuban “Rimsky “ and the blues-drenched “Dizzy the Duck.”

New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four (excellent). A rating of five stars is reserved for classic reissues or retrospectives.

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