Dick Hyman - Brasilian Impressions (1966)

Pianist Dick Hyman wrote the arrangements for this Brazilian-flavored date, which has a fair amount of other high caliber jazz talent: flugelhornists Clark Terry and Joe Wilder, Phil Bodner on flute and piccolo, and a rhythm section that includes Bob Haggart and Bobby Rosengarden. But Hyman's charts aren't aimed primarily at a jazz audience, so they don't have much of the spirit of adventurous improvisation that jazz fans have come to expect of his work. While the music is pleasant and doesn't suffer from the extremely dated sound that many similar recordings done for Command during this era have, it is hardly an essential recording by Dick Hyman. In fact, it is Clark Terry's fat toned, if too brief, flugelhorn solos that tend to steal the spotlight.