Passionate, dramatic, yet poetic and richly nuanced Mari Kodama brings all these qualities to her interpretation of Beethovens Complete Piano Concertos. This exceptional recording with the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin shines with extraordinary intensity and contrast, due in no small measure to the artistic bond between Mari Kodama and her husband, the conductor Kent Nagano. Beethovens Piano Concertos are undoubtedly amongst the most influential works in the history of music. Art demands of us that we shall not stand still, the composer once wrote, placing the idea of development at the heart of his music. His five piano concertos saw Beethoven take piano music out of the salon and into the concert hall, playing a crucial role in advancing the genre towards the symphony, whilst simultaneously creating a bridge from the First Viennese School to the Romantic period. Mari Kodama, whose virtuosic mastery of the piano made her a household name all over the world, has completed the Beethoven Piano Concerto Cycle with her husband Kent Nagano, the international star conductor.
Sony Classical continues its major Mozart opera project with conductor Teodor Currentzis and his orchestra & choir MusicAeterna. A ‘no-compromise’ studio recording cycle of Mozart’s three Da Ponte operas. Living in a unique artistic community established on the edge of Siberia, the musicians work and record under ideal conditions towards Currentzis’ stated goal “to show what can be achieved if you avoid the factory approach of the classical music mainstream”. The soloists’ vocal technique is also markedly different to modern operatic interpretation, with a focus on intimacy and clarity, a use of vibrato remarkably restrictive even by today’s ‘period practice’ standards as well as an approach to melodic ornamentation derived from historic sources which cannot be heard in other performances of these works.
A beautiful album of spiritual soul and Brazilian influenced jazz from Azar Lawrence – and a pretty rare one we're thrilled to have! Lawrence is a stellar sax player with a sound that's a bit like Gary Bartz, which means that he fits in perfectly with the Fantasy-era Prestige Records sound – but the sounds on this set are uncommonly rich and globally influenced. The set's predominantly acoustic, with lots of modal grooves in kind of a Strata East vein – and angular post-Coltrane playing that's very similar to Bartz's work on the Libra album from his early days. Players include Raul De Souza on trombone, Ron Carter on bass, Billy Hart on drums, Dom Salvador, who is really allowed to shine on piano on a few tracks, and drummer & percussionist Guilherme Franco, who brings a world of wonderful percussion on a couple of numbers.
Blasters founders Dave Alvin and Phil Alvin have had a famously combative relationship over the years, but as Dave once said, "We argue sometimes, but we never argue about Big Bill Broonzy." So it's fitting that their love of Big Bill brings them together in the recording studio for their first album together since the Blasters' Hard Line in 1985. Common Ground: Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin Play & Sing the Songs of Big Bill Broonzy features the Alvin Brothers performing a dozen songs from the Broonzy songbook, and while listening to this is a potent reminder of how good Broonzy's songs still sound in the 21st century, it also demonstrates the complementary talents of Dave and Phil Alvin.
Snarky Puppy Duo Releases Thrilling Debut Album As Ghost-Note. If someone asked another to identify Ghost-Note within a genre, one would have trouble coming up with a good answer. The brainchild of Robert “Sput” Searight and Nate Werth has been capturing the attention of Snarky Puppy fanatics for a while now, but their debut album, Fortified, is a game changer that deserves recognition from all types of music-lovers. Immediately blasting to the #1 spot on the iTunes jazz chart upon release, Fortified is more than just a percussionist’s wildest dream, it’s a collaboration of world-class players featuring 18 of today’s rising musicians in Shaun Martin, N’Dambi, Mark Lettieri, Caleb McCampbell, Jason “JT” Thomas, RSVP, Nick Werth, Cleon Edwards, Taron Lockett, Marcelo Woloski, Wes Stephenson, Bob Lanzetti, A.J. Brown, Frank Moka, Ben Bohorquez, and Sylvester Onyejiaka.
Issued by Collectors Dream, the Saturday Night Special (Ready for Rock 'n' Roll Part II) disc pulls together a cash-in collection of classic rock covers. In the late 1980s, they had their greatest hits with like Rock Me, Once Bitten, Twice Shy or Save Your Love. Over the same period, the songs from seventies heavy weights Aerosmith ("Same Old Song and Dance"), Lynyrd Skynyrd ("Saturday Night Special"), Led Zeppelin ("Dazed & Confused"), Thin Lizzy ("Sarah") and Van Halen ("Unchained") carry the sharpest teeth from the recording. Saturday Night Special is the follow-up album to the Collector's Dream Series Ready For Rock N Roll.
The Masters of the French Organ - from Louis XIII to the Monarchy of July: from Jehan Titelouze to Alexandre-Pierre-François Boëly, from the early seventeenth century to the end of royalty in 1848, an anthology of the French organ in box 8cds, elaborated from the records of the Temperaments collection.
The second “Bluesin’” volume in the “By The Bayou” series concentrates on musicians from South Louisiana and South East Texas discovered and recorded by J.D. Miller and Eddie Shuler. These two giants of the post-war recording scene were supreme talent-spotters. They knew the sounds that appealed to the local record-buying public, their target audience. What they couldn’t have known, or even guessed at in their wildest fantasies, was that the appeal of their recordings would last so long and encompass the globe.