Extreme Six

Sixth studio album by the multi-million selling hard rockers, featuring 12 tracks ranging from funk-tinged bangers to soaring ballads as only EXTREME can deliver.

Founded by Yo-Yo Ma during the Project’s second year, the Silk Road Ensemble has featured more than 60 members from 24 countries. Hailed as “one of the 21st century’s great ensembles” by the Vancouver Sun and described as “a kind of roving musical laboratory without walls” by the Boston Globe, the genre-defying Ensemble is a broad collective of musicians who honor the value of each member and the flexibility and creativity of the group. The newest chapter comes with the Sony Masterworks release of "A Playlist Without Borders" from the Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma. This is the groundbreaking group’s fifth recording and first since 2009’s Grammy-nominated Off the Map.

The Turkish-Belgian pianist Işıl Bengi is an insatiable artist who has developed a unique personality, thanks especially to her curiosity about the rich diversity of cultures, her keen interest in the different styles and techniques of the piano, and her extreme sensitivity. Here she presents an original and colourful programme, in which intimacy and virtuosity, gentleness and violence, joy and rage are heard as expressions of the memory of the peoples who form part of her family history. The modernity of the works is characterised by a very natural and organic aspect, often nourished by the musical folklore of the countries of origin of the respective composers. Rhythm is a particularly prominent feature, highlighted in most of the pieces, notably through the use of irregular metres and polyrhythm.

Tchaikovsky’s contemporaries tell us that he was good enough to become a concert pianist, if he had chosen to follow that path. But he preferred to focus on composition, and rarely performed in public concerts. His interest in the piano is mainly to be found in his many pieces for the instrument, and since most of these were suitable for amateurs with solid skills, they sold well and played an important role in building up his fame.

Haymarket Opera, Chicago’s premier early opera company that presents historically informed performances played on 18th-century classical era instruments, performs on this world-premiere recording of L’Amant Anonyme (The Anonymous Lover) by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745–1799).

Following their critically acclaimed recording of Johann Gottfried Müthel’s keyboard concertos (BIS-2179), Polish ensemble Arte dei Suonatori and Marcin Świątkiewicz, who conducts from his instrument, perform the six Hamburg symphonies by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach interspersed with solo fantasias for keyboard. The music of C.P.E. Bach has always been a source of fascination for the listener with its great variety of atmospheres, captivating melodic ideas, irresistible contrasts, surprising interweaving of voices, eccentric harmonies, and extreme dynamic transitions.

In September 2009 Alan Gilbert began his tenure as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, the first native New Yorker to hold the post. "Passion & Pain: Adams, Haydn & Schubert" is one of four individual performances produced and distributed by the New York Philharmonic and personally selected by Alan Gilbert for commercial release during his inaugural season with the Philharmonic.

DAVID HANEY studied composition for six years with Czech composer, Tomas Svoboda.