Béatrice Hardy Laudrin

“Assoluta”: a term that was given to prima donnas of the nineteenth century, those who sang the parts of the great tragic heroines of that time, their voices characterised by a dark timbre, with a rich, strong low register and the high notes of a soprano – a voice that has now almost disappeared.

Maestro Beatrice Venezi, one of the few women in the world to conduct orchestras at an international level, releases her new project HEROINES on the Warner Music Italia label. In this new work, Venezi avails herself of the collaboration of the Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano and Trento. Heroines comes after My Journey - Puccini's Symphonic Works, and is a reference to the message of female empowerment always present in the Maestro's communication.

This is the question at the heart of Secret, the duo’s debut album—or at least, that’s what the music seems to suggest. If sound is an extension of ourselves, it can also become a character we shape. The main character of Secret isn’t visible to the human eye, and yet they give off an androgynous and timeless energy, rooted in multiple languages and spaces. As the album unfolds, we sense the fusion of two distinct energies combined into a single, composite being. This constantly shifting, blurred identity comes to life in the album’s profusion of genres: club music, ambient, chanson, trip-hop, UK garage, and tech house. The tracks stretch and contract, following the trajectory of a dual voice.

Beatrice Rana, partnered by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, performs the piano concertos of Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck-Schumann. She complements them with Liszt’s transcription for solo piano of Robert’s song ‘Widmung’, an exuberant dedication of love, composed in the year of Robert and Clara’s marriage. The previous year (1839), Robert had written to Clara: “You complete me as a composer, as I do you. Every thought of yours comes from mysoul, just as I have to thank you for all my music.”

Big Loud Records/Big Loud Rock heavy hitter HARDY—crowned “Nashville’s nü-metal king” by the Los Angeles Times—continues to soar with the release of his highly anticipated new album QUIT!!.

Françoise Hardy is a pop and fashion icon celebrated as a French national treasure. With her signature breathy alto, she was one of the earliest and most definitive French participants in the yé-yé movement (a style of pop music that initially emerged from Italy, Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal before spreading to France in the early 1960s). She is one of only a few female vocalists who could or would write and perform her own material. She offered a startling contrast to the boy's club of French pop in the early '60s, paving the way for literally thousands of women all over the globe. Known for romantically nostalgic songs and melancholy lyrics, Hardy's first single, "Tous Les Garçons et les Filles," sold over two million copies and made her a European star overnight. Outside music, Hardy also established herself as a fashion model, actress, astrologer, and author. Though she has recorded songs in several languages, it was her early French tunes — that ranged across pop, jazz, blues, and more — that helped to establish her as a legend. In the '70s, she reinvented herself as an artist transcending teen-friendly pop to interpret songs by everyone from Leonard Cohen to Patrick Modiano and has remained a grande dame of French popular song ever since.