Another Light. Àlex Garrobé Plays Marco Smaili

Reveal reunites Wiening once again with her longtime working band: tenor saxophonist Rich Perry, pianist Glenn Zaleski, guitarist Alex Goodman, and bassist Johannes Felscher. They are joined on three tracks by esteemed trumpeter and Greenleaf founder Dave Douglas, a fervent supporter throughout Wiening’s career. Multi-faceted and intriguing, moving and exhilarating, the album is ultimately exactly what the title promises: a revelation.

Grammy Award-winner Alex Klein, former principal oboist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, performs sonatas that signify the oboe’s 20th-century reemergence as a brilliant solo instrument. One of the world’s most famous oboe players, Klein says he waited to acquire a professional lifetime’s worth of experience before putting his stamp on the six sonatas heard here.

On 3 July 1502, a remarkable letter with a bold and daring proposal went on a ship from Genoa to Istanbul, signed by one of the most brilliant minds of his time: Leonardo da Vinci.

All the artists on this CD have been a part of the Leo Records catalogue playing in different combinations. Aura («breath»), moving air, light wind, breeze, the air as a necessary element for breathing and for life, the vital breath. A dazzling journey between light and shadow, between the "grains of sand" in which today falls, the "blades of wind" suspended in a splendid chromatic resonance.

Inventio is an inventive project at all levels, beginning with the instrumentation. Marco Ambrosini is one of very few musicians playing nyckelharpa outside the Swedish folk tradition, and Jean-Louis Matinier has similarly taken the accordion beyond any ‘folkloric’ frame of reference. On the present disc, the French-Italian duo plays a programme inspired by the baroque sonatas of Bach and Biber but also by the lyrical cadences of Pergolesi. They adapt and arrange works of each of these masters, and contribute compositions of their own. Following a path from ancient to modern music, they improvise together, finding new sound-colour combinations in the special blending of their instruments…