Innovate My School From Issue 4, May 2012

EMI Classics is pleased to release the 10th annual 3CD set of highlights from the Progetto Martha Argerich in Lugano, “the delightful festival where youth meets experience and both benefit” (Gramophone). The Times described Argerich’s Lugano Festival as “community music-making on a deluxe scale, with performers and listeners mutually uplifted by music’s wonders”. The set is being released in anticipation of the Festival’s 2013 season. Reviewing the 2011 Live from Lugano release, Nicholas Kenyon wrote in The Observer, “There are not many reliable annual treats among classical CDs these days, but the series of live recordings from Martha Argerich's Lugano festival are now a highlight of each year.”

To celebrate the 60th birthday (on 25 April) of Norwegian jazz pianist/composer/novelist and poet Ketil Bjornstad, ECM issues a double album as "literary soundtrack", its release also coinciding with the Norwegian publication of the one-volume edition of Bjornstad's highly-acclaimed fictional 'Vinding' trilogy, 'To Music', 'The River' and 'The Lady in the Valley'. After keeping his musical and writing activities entirely separate for decades, Renaissance Man Bjornstad dissolved the boundaries with his 'Vinding' books: "When I had the idea of writing a trilogy about the young piano student Aksel Vinding, I realised that I would have to grant music access to my world of writing. This felt surprisingly liberating, almost like a confession.