Celani Simone

This album was apparently a bit of a pastiche of leftovers from sessions for Nina Simone's four previous albums on Philips. But you'd never guess from listening; the material is certainly as strong and consistent as it is on her other mid-'60s LPs. As is the case with most of her albums of the time, the selections are almost unnervingly diverse, ranging from jazz ballads to traditional folk tunes ("Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair") to the near calypso of "Why Keep on Breaking My Heart" to the somber, almost chilling title track. Highlights are two outstanding pop-soul numbers written by the pre-disco Van McCoy ("Either Way I Lose," "Break Down and Let It All Out") and "Four Women," a string of searing vignettes about the hardships of four African-American women that ranks as one of Simone's finest compositions.

In the music of Bach, the Italian violist Simone Libralon has found a lifelong companion, who ‘unfailingly touches that emotional chord we need in the varied and contrasting moments of human experience - a safe haven reserved for intimate spirituality.’ His own approach to the suites which Bach wrote while Capellmeister at Weimar, however, is inflected not only by lived experience but also scholarship and a lively sense of performance style: ‘I’ve always thought of the sound of Bach in keyboard-related terms: fresh and light like a harpsichord, with the depth and solemnity of the organ, but sensed throughout as a continuum that conceals great compositional and conceptual complexity.’

Recorded in 1985 after a break from recording and time spent living in Barbados and Liberia, Nina’s Back features a rejuvenated Nina Simone reaching out to a wider musical audience. Featuring a number of memorable Simone compositions, the band includes horns and backup singers for a unique recording in Nina’s catalog.

Conductor Robert Trevino's fourth album release on Ondine is focused on the late works of composer Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928-2016), one of Finland's most celebrated composers after Sibelius and known worldwide for his Neo-Romantic, even mystic compositions. Together with violinist Simone Lamsma and the Malmö Symphony Orchestra the artists are presenting four final orchestral works by the celebrated composer. Two of the works are world premiere recordings. In his late period, Rautavaara received several communications from the world's leading violinists requesting him to write works for them. He was able to oblige them, creating several extensive works featuring solo violin. Fantasia (2015) for violin and orchestra is a work of soft Neo-Romantic harmonies and soaring melodic lines. In 2014, Rautavaara was asked to write a new Violin Concerto.

"Lava", "La Diva", "Bel Canto" - these are the names of some of Simone Kermes' highly praised and successful albums. Their new album "Inferno e Paradiso" is thematically about "Heaven and Hell" about "Virtues and Deadly Sins" - musically illustrated with 14 titles from four centuries from baroque to rock, from Bach to Sting, from Vivaldi to Led Zeppelin.

For someone as obscure as Johann Christian Schieferdecker, a pupil of Buxtehude, he certainly has gotten his share of play recently. Not only has my Read more Fanfare 34:3) but another, Jerry Dubins, reviewed and recommended an entire disc of these instrumental works in a recent issue ( Fanfare 35:6) performed by the Elbipolis Hamburg period-instrument ensemble on Challenge. Both found them recommendable, though the latter seemed reticent on whether or not Schieferdecker represents a marvelous new rediscovery. This disc may not decide that issue, but I do find it curious that in the space of a very short time, a composer who was completely dissed by Johann Mattheson, the early chronicler of Hamburg music but who grew up practically as the blood brother of Reinhard Keiser, should suddenly emerge from shadows.