Claire Doos

Well, I've been well and truly Claire Martinned - and it's a good thing to be, I can tell you. With these four from the ‘nineties, which I hadn't heard before, plus the five that I already had, I thought I might have the Linn CM output so far. But I discover that there are a couple more I have to catch up with. With Claire having been showing British female jazz singers how to do it during two decades now, the nineties were her ‘early years', and this package, ranging from her Waiting Game debut (1992), through Devil May Care (1993), Old Boyfriends (1994), to Make This City Ours (1997), provides some intriguing insights.

The young American pianist Claire Huangci, winner of the first prize and the Mozart prize at the 2018 Geza Anda Competition, continuously captivates audiences with her “radiant virtuosity, artistic sensitivity, keen interactive sense and subtle auditory dramaturgy” (Salzburger Nachrichten). With an irrepressible curiosity and penchant for unusual repertoire, she proves her versatility with a wide range in repertoire spanning from Bach and Scarlatti, to Bernstein, Gulda, and Corigliano.

Well, I've been well and truly Claire Martinned - and it's a good thing to be, I can tell you. With these four from the ‘nineties, which I hadn't heard before, plus the five that I already had, I thought I might have the Linn CM output so far. But I discover that there are a couple more I have to catch up with. With Claire having been showing British female jazz singers how to do it during two decades now, the nineties were her ‘early years', and this package, ranging from her Waiting Game debut (1992), through Devil May Care (1993), Old Boyfriends (1994), to Make This City Ours (1997), provides some intriguing insights.

Experimental musician Claire Rousay and visual artist Dani Toral have been in each others’ orbit since young adulthood in San Antonio, but it took a decade for them to find A Softer Focus. Before Rousay had put her compositional gray matter to task for the album’s music, she knew she wanted to work with Toral- being familiar with her past work centering her Mexican heritage. Toral’s vibrant color palette and reinterpretations of comfort in oneself and the natural, vegetative world connected easily with her explorations in communication and intimacy. Historically, Rousay primarily operated in non-melodic experimental music, sculpting compositions from obsessive field recordings, inserting voice-to-text, percussion played via text message sounds, conversations, and daily life. By contrast, the six-song collection and collaborative project A Softer Focus is lush and almost entirely melodic, even veering into pop at a couple points…