2000 Phrases

Claude Challe's Buddha-Bar, Vol. II compilation has elements of Far Eastern spirituality, African song, European electronica, and Spanish spice. The first CD is very mellow for the most part. Deepak Chopra and Demi Moore, far and away the most recognizable names on the album, do a spoken word ditty on love and self-worth. People who are not fans of new age doctrine will appreciate artists such as Oliver Shanti and Consuelo Luz, both of whom contribute songs that manage to sound musical, spiritual and ethnic at once. The second CD varies from hallucinatory to groovy to fairly high-energy. "Tears Inshalla" will appeal to fans of Eastern-influenced trance. Lyrics are of almost no importance on the album. They do exist on most tracks, but they bounce around from English to Portuguese to Arabic. Bits and pieces and snatches of phrases come through here and there - just enough to make a listener feel in sync with it all. This music is intended to be an ambient journey, and while a few of the tracks seem to stray off into Never Never Land, the majority of them should appeal to fans of worldbeat.

This is a live recording, made at a pair of concerts in May, and ‘live’ is undoubtedly the word for it. All the performances have an improvisatory quality, interpretative decisions seemingly made before your very ears. At the beginning of the Prokofiev it is as though Mutter and Orkis, realising that the audience in the Beethovensaal are already uncommonly silent and attentive, had decided after a quick glance at each other to begin the Sonata almost confidingly, with quiet tenderness and muted colour.

The marvelous voice of tenor Ian Bostridge could not be more perfect for this program of Bach cantatas and arias. Like Hans Hotter before him, Bostridge's voice has a unique ethereal quality, a hollow distance that identifies less with the character and more the spirit of the subject. His singing clearly captures the "disembodied presence", as Michel Roubinet aptly puts it in the booklet's notes, of the mortal somewhere between resignation of the world and the ultimate union with Christ–the theme that links every selection here.

The Cinematic Orchestra is a British nu jazz and downtempo music group created in 1999 by Jason Swinscoe. The group is signed to independent record label Ninja Tune…

Orange is a reference to Georges Perec. Just as in Perec’s literary works everyday events and common keepsakes stand for a collective memory, so the music moves in a way that speaks of a shared expanse: different modes are assembled like a puzzle, creating an overall picture of associative images. In Perec’s creations, key words and places become way stations in a labyrinth of memories.
"Je me souviens" is a key sentence around which the Parisian poet Georges Perec (1938-1982) has constructed a patchwork of narrative aphorisms. At the same time, he is open to interpretation, and so Perec’s work acts as a stimulus for Michael Riessler, as he brings his musical perceptions and awareness into play…

In his 90th year, Elliott Carter is doing something few nonagenarians ever do: he's premiering a striking new string quartet, his fifth. And it's an awe-inspiring piece. The Arditti String Quartet takes up the short phrases that run with and then against one another with sureness, plucking and scraping and making their bows sing. They then delve into each of the five interludes that interrogate the quartet's six sections and play through the disparate splinters of tone and flushes of midrange color as if they were perfectly logical developments. Which they're not. Carter has again brilliantly scripted a chatter of stringed voices–à la the second quartet–that converse quickly, sometimes mournfully, but never straightforwardly. This complexity of conversation is a constant for Carter, coming sharply to light in "90+" and then in Rohan de Saram and Ursula Oppens's heaving read of the 1948 Sonata for Cello and Piano, as well as in virtually all these pieces. This is a monumental recording, extending the documented work of a lamentably underappreciated American composer.

First ever release by this obscure commune band from Stuttgart. They were known for their long instrumental-oriented jam tracks, influenced by Cream and Jimi Hendrix. Signed by the OHR label in 1971, they were unable to complete studio recordings and broke up before ever finishing an album. This CD collects the best material from over 20 hours of available jam sessions and rehearsal tapes. A quartet, with guitar/bass/drums augmented by a fourth member on sax/flute/okkarini/oboe. Freeform improvisational ballroom elements abound and if you approve of phrases like "endless stoned jamming", you might want to fall in line.

It is always a thrill to hear a performance of newly discovered music by a favourite composer, especially when it includes previously unknown versions of much loved works like Marin Marais’ La Folie The music on this disc is a selection taken from a manuscript in the Scottish National Library of 150 pieces for solo viola da gamba.

Run with the Pack, Bad Company's third and best album, reiterates the raw, rowdy style of their debut, Bad Co., solidifies the loose ends that marred Straight Shooter and adds new directions of its own. Maybe most importantly, the record is refreshing proof that rockers don't have to produce literature in their lyrics or cultivate personae to create good art. Bad Company's is a purely musical triumph…

Schumann’s String Quartets have been waiting for a talented young group to bring a fresh voice to the few familiar ones already in the catalog. The Eroica Quartet isn’t exactly young anymore (the group started in 1993), but it certainly brings a new perspective to these works. The Melos on DG (in a two-disc box with the Brahms Quartets) and the Quartetto Itialiano on Philips have been the benchmarks for years, but this recording definitely can be placed alongside them. The players of Eroica are period performance enthusiasts, and their clear, vibrant sound certainly revitalizes the music–which represents a burst of creative energy from Schumann. He wrote these pieces within weeks of his beloved Clara’s return from a long tour, and his joy (and the mental stability she provided him) is evident throughout.