Los Stellarians

Mixing the familiar sounds of Dick Dale, Duane Eddy, and the Ventures, Los Straitjackets create their own version of energetic surf guitar twang, complete with Mexican wrestling masks. Los Straitjackets began in the summer of 1988. Eddie Angel (guitar), L.J. "Jimmy" Lester (drums), and Danny Amis (guitar) formed an instrumental trio called the Straitjackets, which played local Nashville shows throughout the summer. After a six-year hiatus, the Straitjackets reunited, added E. Scott Esbeck on bass, and changed their name to Los Straitjackets. In November 1994, the band signed with Upstart Records.

Gustavo Dudamel's historic Mahler Project was a highlight of music-making in early 2012, for he led the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela in Gustav Mahler's nine completed symphonies, in a series of critically acclaimed concerts. The first CD to be issued from the marathon event is Deutsche Grammophon's 2013 release of the Symphony No. 9 in D major, one of the most challenging of Mahler's works to interpret and one of the most satisfying to hear when it is played with insight and originality.

It's been over 10 years since the last edition, this new volume of "La Musica De Los Dioses" subtitled "Requiem" find fourteen original pieces that try to provide a spectrum of influences whose origins come from the most remote places on the planet. Chill flamenco, the mystical sound, the Eastern atmospheres and Classic, Chill Out and Ambient. They combine to offer an album with unique identity of its kind. Sounds and influences combine to create a timeless atmosphere, where ethnic and electronic sounds offer a whole multi-cultural sound spectrum. On this occasion La Musica De Los Dioses offers sounds, percussions and voices of the Amazon forest, the tropical islands and Indonesia or multiple regions of Africa, Gregorian chants, sounds with "Alma" converge here with the influences of very different cultures and current rates. Each of the pieces is a marvel of harmony and instrumentation with eternal stories of love and passion.

John Adams' The Gospel According to the Other Mary, first performed in 2012 in Los Angeles, is something of an expansion on the composer's El Niño, a Passion story adorned with a variety of contemporary themes and musical materials. Like the earlier work, it features a libretto by longtime Adams collaborator Peter Sellars, and it may be sung on-stage as an oratorio or presented as an opera.

Superstar violinist Anne Akiko Meyers’ imagination and ingenuity knows no bounds. Her idea to persuade leading living composer Morten Lauridsen to transform his choral masterpiece, O Magnum Mysterium, into a work for violin and choir is a masterstroke. Teaming up with conductor Grant Gershon – who first collaborated with Anne as chamber musicians over 40 years ago – and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, for whom Lauridsen was their first Composer in Residence, Anne rounds out this digital EP with three other arrangements for violin and chorus of ever-popular works by J. S. Bach. The result is gold dust for the holiday season.