Elite September 2019

Here is confirmation that Francesco Piemontesi belongs to a small elite: he is a pianist that other pianists go to hear. He is awesome and speculative in the A major while in the B-flat he achieves greatness without recourse to idiosyncrasy or extremes. Even in a crowded field of celebrated recordings, Piemontesi’s performances are wholly exceptional, enlightening if exhausting at every level. They are crowned by Pentatone’s beautifully natural sound.

The singer’s eighth studio album arrives April 26th. She tapped an elite team of producers and songwriters for it, including Max Martin, Shellback, Julia Michaels, Nate Ruess, Greg Kurstin, Billy Mann, Teddy Geiger, Sasha Sloan, Beck, Sia and Imagine Dragons’ Dan Reynolds.

The Michael Thompson Band is back with their brand new album, “Love And Beyond” on April 26, 2019! For this new release, Michael wanted to go back to the more polished AOR sound of the band’s debut album. Once again, he teamed up with Wyn Davis for the mix and also had the amazing Mark Spiro involved in the songwriting and appearing on vocals together with the awesome Larry King and Larry Antonino. Best known for being Unruly Child’s bass player, Antonino delivers a phenomenal vocal performance which can only be defined as stunning. Another Unruly Child member, Guy Allison appears on keyboards, while drums on the album are handled by Sergio Gonzalez and Tim Pedersen.

Ilmiliekki Quartet (roughly translates from Finnish as Quartet Ablaze) is an elite unit of the Finnish jazz scene, featuring trumpeter Verneri Pohjola, pianist Tuomo Prättälä, double bass player Antti Lötjönen and drummer Olavi Louhivuori, but released its last album as quartet in 2006 («Take It With Me», TUM). Since then the quartet accompanied vocalist Emma Salokoski on two albums.