Daugherty

Punk rock's poet laureate Patti Smith ranks among the most influential female rock & rollers of all time. Ambitious, unconventional, and challenging, Smith's music was hailed as the most exciting fusion of rock and poetry since Bob Dylan's heyday…

Kronos is a quality act. No quartet currently performing has done more to bridge the divide between popular and ‘serious’ music, and although others have served contemporary repertoire with equal dedication (the Arditti Quartet being among the most notable), Kronos take top laurels for imagination, presentation and an intuitive sense of what best ‘connects’ with a non-specialist music-loving audience.

Christmas is one of the most special times of the year. We gather with our loved ones with a sense of harmony and willing to share good times. To achieve this special ambiance, music is essential.

Superstar violinist Anne Akiko Meyers’ imagination and ingenuity knows no bounds. Her idea to persuade leading living composer Morten Lauridsen to transform his choral masterpiece, O Magnum Mysterium, into a work for violin and choir is a masterstroke. Teaming up with conductor Grant Gershon – who first collaborated with Anne as chamber musicians over 40 years ago – and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, for whom Lauridsen was their first Composer in Residence, Anne rounds out this digital EP with three other arrangements for violin and chorus of ever-popular works by J. S. Bach. The result is gold dust for the holiday season.

Nearly 30 years and nine albums in, Patti Smith shows no signs of giving up, or giving in, despite the fact she expected to be quietly doing her work instead of making rock & roll albums and playing in front of audiences. But then 9/11, Afghanistan, war in Iraq. Smith lives the vocation of a poet in an old-world sense of that word…