Echo Advantage Lucy

Digitally re-mastered edition of the classic 1970 album featuring one bonus track: 'I'm a Thief'. Formed out of the ashes of the legendary group the Misunderstood, the band featured Ray Owen, Glen Campbell, Chris Mercer, Neil Hubbard, Keith Ellis and Pete Dobson. One of the first signings to Vertigo Records, Juicy Lucy's second album was a fine work and spawned their classic interpretation of Frank Zappa's 'Willie the Pimp'.

Handels Queens features some of the most exquisite pieces of music written by G.F. Handel and his contemporaries for the two finest singers of the eighteenth century, Faustina Bordoni and Francesca Cuzzoni. Often wrongfully framed as rivals, these dazzling new recordings with Mary Bevan and Lucy Crowe reveal the distinctive yet versatile talent of the Italian vocalists. Led by London Early Opera Director, Bridget Cunningham, Handels Queens serves an example of the groups dedication to imaginative programming and outstanding period performance, placing them at the forefront of baroque research.

The new full-length from Lucy Dacus, Home Video. This new gift from Dacus, which features vocal contributions from boygenius bandmates Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers, was built on an interrogation of her coming-of-age years in Richmond, VA. Many songs start the way a memoir might—“In the summer of ’07 I was sure I’d go to heaven, but I was hedging my bets at VBS”—and all of them have the compassion, humor, and honesty of the best autobiographical writing. Most importantly and mysteriously, this album displays Dacus’s ability to use the personal as portal into the universal.

Viol consort Fretwork and mezzo soprano Helen Charlston explore the more reflective and sombre Christmas celebrations of Elizabethan England, in a collection of works by William Byrd, Anthony Holborne, Orlando Gibbons and Martin Peerson.

After their acclaimed recording of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, La Nuova Musica and David Bates expand their PENTATONE discography with Handel’s Unsung Heroes, in which the instrumentalists of Handel’s operas are put centre stage. Traditionally restricted to an “invisible” existence in the orchestra pit, La Nuova Musica’s obbligato instrumentalists – violinist Thomas Gould, oboist Leo Duarte and bassoonist Joe Qiu – are now in the limelight. They will stand as equal partners alongside a world-class line up of soloists – soprano Lucy Crowe, mezzo-soprano Christine Rice and countertenor Iestyn Davies – showing how Handel wrote music as virtuosic and lyrical for his unsung heroes as for their singing counterparts.

Digitally re-mastered edition of the classic 1970 album featuring one bonus track: 'I'm a Thief'. Formed out of the ashes of the legendary group the Misunderstood, the band featured Ray Owen, Glen Campbell, Chris Mercer, Neil Hubbard, Keith Ellis and Pete Dobson. One of the first signings to Vertigo Records, Juicy Lucy's second album was a fine work and spawned their classic interpretation of Frank Zappa's 'Willie the Pimp'.

Handel’s musical exploits in Italy earned him the sobriquet ‘Il caro Sassone’ and brought him his first major triumphs in a number of genres. Th is recital explores Handel’s youthful brilliance in various secular and sacred contexts, allowing soprano Lucy Crowe to display her thrilling versatility. The disc includes two complete cantatas(Armida abbandonata and Alpestre monte) and a Salve Regina, as well as individual arias from other cantatas and oratorios. Plus there are three instrumental movements executed with elegant panache by The English Concert. Crowe is the outstanding performer, however, her bright, mercurial tone as affecting and effective in the Angel’s blazing, stratospheric ‘Disserratevi, o porte d’Averno’ from La Resurrezione as in Pleasure’s cajoling ‘Lascia la spina’ from Il trionfo or the suicidal desolation of ‘Almen dopo’ from Alpestre monte.

Vivaldi's Dixit Dominus, RV 807, was added to the Vivaldi canon only in 2005; it was long attributed to Baldassare Galuppi. That shows you how minor composers don't get their due; it's a marvelous work, but it's only getting recordings now that Vivaldi's name is attached to it. At any rate, it's well worth hearing in this excellent performance by the rising British group La Nuova Musica, which has both vocal and instrumental components. They move like a well-oiled machine, making possible the clear communication of such vivid details as the musical depiction of a stream in the strings in the countertenor aria De torrente in via bibet (track 8) and the unusually elaborate fugue that concludes the work.