Grand Stand

Rhod Gilbert goes where no man wants to go: on a deep dive into the causes and the traumas of male infertility. It's a topic close to his heart - Rhod and his wife Sian are trying to conceive. While Sian is struggling with endometriosis, Rhod was unpleasantly surprised to discover he has a low sperm count - 'senile swimmers in need of zimmers', as he puts it.

Take command of the Union or the Confederacy. Prepare your nation for war, recruit and organize great armies and fleets under legendary commanders like Grant, Lee, Jackson or Farragut, plan cunning maneuvers on an epic campaign map and defeat your enemies in real-time battles!

Comedian Rhod Gilbert goes where no man wants to go: on a deep dive into the causes and the traumas of male infertility. It’s a topic close to his heart - Rhod and his wife Sian are trying to conceive. While Sian is struggling with endometriosis, Rhod was unpleasantly surprised to discover he has a low sperm count - ‘senile swimmers in need of zimmers’, as he puts it.

You may not be able to see the gorgeous landscapes behind Baby Grand, Stuart McLamb’s fourth record as The Love Language, but they’re so essential to the picture you’ll feel them in every note. Started in, of all places, a cavernous Virginia hammock factory, fragmentary demos came alive when splashed by sunshine during a move across the country to California, where the album was completed. “It was something just about being in a new city, and a new light,” McLamb says, “and reopening the sessions, and this demo that I thought was a throwaway, suddenly I’m really feeling it….”

A high-art concept album about an overwhelming passion between two writers is a bold foundational choice on which to craft one’s debut, but Winnipeg-based duo Heavy Bell is composed of a seasoned indie rock veteran (Royal Canoe’s Matt Peters) and an actor/singer-songwriter (Tom Keenan), both of whom dream a little bigger than some of us.

The German composer Carl Arnold (1794–1873) brought the spirit of Beethoven with him when he established himself in Oslo, building the foundations of professional music life in Norway. Fortepianist Torleif Torgersen has previously released a critically acclaimed album with Arnold's solo piano music. Now he presents a recording with the grand piano concerto and sextet by the composer, together with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Rinaldo Alessandrini. Arnold himself was somewhat of a fiend at the keyboard, and both the concerto and the sextet are grand works demanding everything of the soloist.