441 announces new imprint -- Test of Time Records. Vintage jazz for modern tastes.

441 Records Corporation is proud to announce the launch of a new label imprint, TEST OF TIME Records. In the modern recording era, it has become increasingly rare for quality collections of superbly preserved projects to be presented to the public. One such series of remaining rarities is the East Wind Masterpiece Collection line from Japan. 441 Records Corporation now introduces on Compact Disc some of the best sounding Jazz from the late ‘70s on its new TEST OF TIME trademark that will feature over thirty important, fantastic recordings.

TEST OF TIME recordings are being released in the United States in CD format for the first time. These titles simply have not been available. The collection includes works by jazz greats such as Art Farmer, The Great Jazz Trio, Andrew Hill, Hank Jones, Sheila Jordan, Al Haig, Sadao Watanabe, Joe Sample, Junior Mance, Don Friedman and many others. East Wind presented one of the most complete collection of recordings by The Great Jazz Trio, which we will now make available.

Commented Harvey Rosen, President of 441 Records, “We are very excited to bring timeless recordings of excellent quality that were engineered and packaged with great care to discriminating jazz fans in the U.S. Even after 30 years, these titles definitely stand on their own. They have clearly withstood the test of time.”

The first four albums to be released under the TEST OF TIME trademark in March and April, 2005 are Hommage (sic) by Andrew Hill, At the Village Vanguard by The Great Jazz Trio, Yesterday’s Thoughts by Art Farmer and Confirmation by Sheila Jordan. All of these albums are unique and historic in each artist’s respective discographies.

Hommage was the first and reportedly only solo piano effort ever by Andrew Hill. It is a rare and unique effort, elegant and challenging still today. At The Village Vanguard is a live recording that documents the historic performance by the dreamteam trio of Hank Jones, Ron Carter and Tony Williams that defined the group that became known as The Great Jazz Trio. Yesterday’s Thoughts is mostly a ballad effort by Art Farmer, who shows off his fluegelhorn mastery and is backed up by Cedar Walton, Sam Jones and Billy Higgins. Confirmation is Sheila Jordan’s second album recorded after Portrait of Sheila Jordan in 1962 for Blue Note.

East Wind was formed in 1975 as a joint venture between Nippon Phonogram (a Japanese subsidiary of Philips’ record division Phonogram) and Ai Music. During its five years of operations, 72 albums were recorded and released featuring well-known and highly respected jazz artists from both Japan and the United States in the highest audio quality possible. The quality was not limited to just audio. The intent was to elevate the entire process of creating quality jazz records and, to that end, some of the then top designers and top photographers in Japan were used for album artwork.

Many of the staff associated with the East Wind label went on to have very productive careers in the industry. One of its founders and producer for many titles, Yasohachi “88” Itoh, later joined Sony Music in 1978 and has made major contributions toward Sony’s SACD development efforts and the design and operation of Sony’s multimillion dollar recording studio located in Tokyo. He has produced over 350 records and has been associated with 3,000 albums. He currently produces jazz albums for his label “Eighty-Eight’s” in association with Village Records in Japan. 441 Records licenses and distributes some of Eighty-Eight’s titles in the United States. Other producers of the East Wind line included Kiyoshi Itoh, Toshinari Koinuma and Nobuya Itoh.

The majority of the albums were engineered by the late David Baker, a highly skilled engineer who was Chief Engineer at Vanguard Records at the time. Upon his untimely death in 2004, he had more than 2,000 recordings to his engineering and production credit that spanned 40 years covering all genres of music. His refined perfectionist’s recording techniques influenced many young engineers working on East Wind line, including Yoshihiro Suzuki, who also now works at Sony Music Studios with Yasohachi “88” Itoh.

All the CDs from the East Wind Masterpiece Collection now being released by TEST OF TIME have been upgraded and digitally remastered using a process called the Direct Stream Digital (DSD) mastering process. In this process, analog signal from the original master tape is passed through an A/D converter resulting in a 1-bit DSD signal that was sampled at an astonishing 2,822,400 samples per second. This means 64 times the sampling frequency of standard Compact Disc. All editing, including song spacing and equalization, is done in the DSD domain using a special digital workstation, called Sonoma, developed by Sony Music. After equalization, the signal was converted from the 1-bit DSD format to 16-bit PCM using a high performance D/D converter made by dCS, a manufacturer of high-end, professional audio digital conversion products. The result is more than just superb frequency response and dynamic range. It brings to life the original masters.

The first releases of TEST OF TIME will be available in stores such as Barnes & Noble, Borders and Tower Records in late March and early April.