David Grisman & Martin Taylor - Tone Poems II: The Sounds Of The Great Jazz Guitars, Mandolins, Mandolas & Mandocellos (1995)

David Grisman's duo project with Scottish jazz guitarist Taylor, is a sequel to 1994's Tone Poems by Grisman and Tony Rice. That one explored the bluegrass side of Grisman's music through the use of vintage fretted instruments, and Poems II explores the jazz side the same way. As the lavishly illustrated, 48-page booklet that comes with this single CD explains, the 19 tunes on Tone Poems II are sequenced in the order they were written and are played on instruments built within a few years of the composition. Thus "Blue Moon," written by Richard Rodgers in 1934, is played on a 1935 Epiphone Deluxe guitar by Taylor and on a 1932 Epiphone Windsor mandolin by Grisman. A must for vintage-instrument obsessives. --Geoffrey Himes