Focus 28.06.24

Temptation, prohibition, good, evil… ‘how relevant are these in today's world?’ asks Benjamin Appl. With the complicity of pianist James Baillieu, we are taken on a musical arc from simple folk songs through to the great song composers such as Schubert, Schumann and Wolf, along the way visiting the French masters Debussy and Poulenc, exploring ‘new objectivity’ with Weill and Eisler and enjoying compositions by Casucci, Heggie and others.

A century or so ago, Haydn Wood’s name was quite well-known in Britain. The youngest of the four composers here, he was born in Yorkshire in 1882 but raised on the Isle of Man. He enrolled as a scholarship student at Royal College of Music in London at the age of 15 and progressed so swiftly that soon thereafter his abilities as a violinist impressed such visiting luminary virtuosi as Pablo de Sarasate and Joseph Joachim.

Temptation, prohibition, good, evil… ‘how relevant are these in today's world?’ asks Benjamin Appl. With the complicity of pianist James Baillieu, we are taken on a musical arc from simple folk songs through to the great song composers such as Schubert, Schumann and Wolf, along the way visiting the French masters Debussy and Poulenc, exploring ‘new objectivity’ with Weill and Eisler and enjoying compositions by Casucci, Heggie and others.

For the third album collection of the Joni Mitchell Archives project, The Asylum Albums (1976-1980) covers what is arguably the knottiest and most challenging period in a career known for being knotty and challenging. While there are certainly fans who have a preference for Mitchell's diaristic/post-folk sounds of the late '60s/early '70s Reprise era or the exploratory fusions of pop and jazz of her first three Asylum albums, most of those fans can find space to love all (or at least most) of the work she released between 1968 and 1975.

For the third album collection of the Joni Mitchell Archives project, The Asylum Albums (1976-1980) covers what is arguably the knottiest and most challenging period in a career known for being knotty and challenging. While there are certainly fans who have a preference for Mitchell's diaristic/post-folk sounds of the late '60s/early '70s Reprise era or the exploratory fusions of pop and jazz of her first three Asylum albums, most of those fans can find space to love all (or at least most) of the work she released between 1968 and 1975.

For the third album collection of the Joni Mitchell Archives project, The Asylum Albums (1976-1980) covers what is arguably the knottiest and most challenging period in a career known for being knotty and challenging. While there are certainly fans who have a preference for Mitchell's diaristic/post-folk sounds of the late '60s/early '70s Reprise era or the exploratory fusions of pop and jazz of her first three Asylum albums, most of those fans can find space to love all (or at least most) of the work she released between 1968 and 1975.

For the sixth volume of his Chopin project, the Canadian pianist and exclusive Chandos Artist Louis Lortie has built a programme that includes works from the earliest to the latest periods in the composer’s life, all of which have connection with or focus on Chopin’s Polish identity.

Born as Carlos Althier de Souza Lemos Escobar, Guinga grew up in Rio de Janeiro absorbing Brazilian contemporary and folkloric music as well as classical, rock, pop and Jazz. Having shaped a creative identity that embraces the signature energy of Brazil’s diverse artistic enterprise, Guinga’s legacy lives within the spirit of crafting a voice that’s essentially Brazilian while cultivating a vivacious universal appeal. A spirit lovingly captured by trombonist Natalie Cressman and guitarist Ian Faquini within their new GroundUP album GUINGA, releasing on April 12, 2024.

The latest release by bassist and composer James Ilgenfritz presents his work in four contexts: Almostness is a work for solo contrabass in Just Intonation scordatura with Autonomous Mechanical Instrument Array, while Trust Fall is a work for saxophone quartet, recorded live at Ilgenfritz’s 2018 residency for John Zorn’s The Stone at the New School series. Apophenia V features the Ghost Ensemble, recorded live at Redcat in Los Angeles, while Subject-Object-Abject was written and recorded in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, and represents the acute feelings of disassociation from reality that marked those days.