Katja Maria Werker Contact Myself

Meet Me Where They Play the Blues captures Maria Muldaur at her sexy, sultry, sizzlin' best. Twenty-five years after she sent her camel to bed in "Midnight at the Oasis," Muldaur delivers a soulful package of late-night blues gems bolstered by a top-notch supporting cast. Originally planning to record this material with the legendary singer/pianist Charles Brown, she ended up producing a tribute when Brown became too ill to join in. He was, however, able to sing a duet with Muldaur from his nursing home on "Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You," a performance that turned out to be his last.

NEA Jazz Master Maria Schneider creates music that critics describe as “heartstoppingly gorgeous and beyond categorization.” With her orchestra, she introduces her bold new piece, Data Lords, which explores life simultaneously being lived through the natural and digital worlds.

The initial inspiration for this project came to me while I was writing a monograph on Schönberg’s “Verklärte Nacht”, Il labirinto e l’intrico dei viottoli [The Labyrinth and the Tangle of Pathways]. Schönberg, like Mahler, was attuned to the relationship between music and venues for music, and in my research, I discovered that Mahler was particularly concerned with the chamber-music aspect of his own Lieder from the Wunderhorn collection. He had even conducted some of them in what was then known as the Small Hall of Vienna’s Musikverein (now Brahms Hall), a space only suitable for a chamber orchestra—too small for the ensemble required for some of these Lieder. I consequently wondered about the kind of adaptation Mahler had made for that performance, while I was already considering undertaking a similar operation myself.