Bob Szajner Digital Ensemble 9 Mood 009t

Grammy Award-winning Third Coast Percussion, whose artistry blends “creative fearlessness with reverent precision” (BBC Music Magazine), offers an album of enterprising collaborations and world-premiere recordings of works written or arranged expressly for the Chicago-based percussion quartet, representing four different approaches to composing concert music.

This record is an unexpected treat. Bob James has had a lucrative career writing and playing crossover jazz/pop. Although he had actually started his career with a straight-ahead trio date for Mercury in 1962 and also led a bizarre avant-garde session for ESP in 1965, his career since 1974 has offered very little of interest to consumers who prefer to hear inventive jazz as opposed to pleasant background music.

Jazz Mood is the first released album by multi-instrumentalist Yusef Lateef recorded in 1957 and released on the Savoy label. The album was produced from Lateef's second recording session.

Pianeti è un disco più coerente e omogeneo rispetto al precedente esordio del duo veneto. Se È Difficile Trovarsi, infatti, scontava ancora la ricerca di una dimensione, questa ora appare più netta e definita, ponendosi in equilibrio tra cantautorato italiano anni ‘70/‘80 e una pronunciata vena rock.

Chicago’s Civitas Ensemble presents a spectrum of new instrumental works by living Chinese composers, each with a unique perspective on Western and Far Eastern musical sensibilities. Spearheaded by Shanghai-born violinist Yuan-Qing Yu, a Civitas founding member and assistant concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Jin Yin (“Golden Tone”) comprises world-premiere recordings of works by Yao Chen, Vivian Fung, and Lu Pei, plus specially made new arrangements of pieces from Zhou Long and Chen Yi.

The wedding in 1568 of Renate of Lorraine to Wilhelm V, heir to the throne of the Duke of Bavaria, was a sumptuous, 18-day spectacular designed to rival those of the Italian courts. Orlande de Lassus had been the court’s maestro di cappella since 1556. Using an eye-witness account of the event, Ensemble Origo presents a hypothetical reconstruction of some of his musical contributions - a Te Deum, the moresca (a genre related to the villanella), and an improvised comedy - thereby shedding light on some of the various meanings that the music had for its 16th-century listeners.