La Religieuse The Nun (2013) [repost]

The best jazz groups are made up of kindred spirits, but the rare family band has something more – an intuitive feel for each other that goes beyond words and gestures to a kind of bred-in-the-bone telepathy. The 3 Cohens are that sort of uncommon collective, a trio of siblings – tenor saxophonist/clarinetist Anat Cohen, trumpeter Avishai Cohen and soprano saxophonist Yuval Cohen – whose sense of improvisational interplay is both uncannily fluent and wonderfully, infectiously warm. In Tightrope the group digs deep to explore this connection in an unaccompanied setting. Stellar guests Fred Hersch, Christian McBride and Jonathan Blake individually add their voices to the conversation.

Featuring thirteen fresh and original tracks, ‘There And Back’ sees Chris Norman draw on the experience and songwriting panache that have seen him notch up over 20 million albums sales globally. As well as his own hits, Chris has worked with the likes of ABBA’s Agnetha, Donovan, Heavy Metal Kids, Cynthia Lennon, and duetted with Suzi Quattro on the hit ‘Stumblin’ In’. He even created the England football team’s World Cup ’82 hit ‘This Time’, ‘There And Back’ is all about Chris though. This is a collection of dynamic songs and, of course, that wonderful voice is employed to full effect. With an ongoing full diary of live dates across the world, the former Smokie vocalist is in fantastic form with this release which sees him making a whole-hearted return to what he does best.

Preservation Act 1 (1973). Preservation is Ray Davies' most ambitious project - a musical that used the quaint, small-town nostalgia of Village Green as a template to draw the entirety of society and how it works. Or, at least that's what the concept seems to be, since the storyline was so convoluted, it necessitated three separate LPs, spread over two albums, and it still didn't really make sense because the first album, Preservation, Act 1, acted more like an introduction to the characters, and all the story was condensed into the second album. Davies intended all of Preservation to stand as one double-album set, but he scrapped the first sessions for the album, which led to record company pressure to deliver an album before the end of 1973 - hence, the appearance of Preservation, Act 1 in mid-November…

Preservation Act 1 (1973). Preservation is Ray Davies' most ambitious project - a musical that used the quaint, small-town nostalgia of Village Green as a template to draw the entirety of society and how it works. Or, at least that's what the concept seems to be, since the storyline was so convoluted, it necessitated three separate LPs, spread over two albums, and it still didn't really make sense because the first album, Preservation, Act 1, acted more like an introduction to the characters, and all the story was condensed into the second album. Davies intended all of Preservation to stand as one double-album set, but he scrapped the first sessions for the album, which led to record company pressure to deliver an album before the end of 1973 - hence, the appearance of Preservation, Act 1 in mid-November…

A handsome 11 CD box set honouring the unique art of Pepe Romero, who celebrates his 70th birthday in 2014. This set offers a broad spectrum of Pepe s art from various periods in his career. It moves from the Baroque through to twentieth-century works and features solo, chamber and orchestral performances.

The great Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires has issued some career-defining albums in the first years of the 21st century, and this 2013 album, covering perhaps Franz Schubert's two most ambitious sonatas, is certainly among them. It's a challenging yet sensuous performance with enough in it to reward many multiple hearings. The two sonatas are treated somewhat differently, but both readings find a midpoint between the big old-fashioned concert-hall Schubert and newer readings, often on historical instruments, that emphasize the intimate, somewhat intellectual nature of the circle for which Schubert composed a lot of his music.

Scored for a large orchestra, including triple wind and a raft of percussion, Penderecki’s Piano Concerto, heard here in its 2007 revision first performed by Barry Douglas, renews the composer’s direct involvement with the ‘grand’ concerto tradition that culminated in Rachmaninov and Prokofiev. Its sub-title ‘Resurrection’ refers to the melody based on a chorale of a non-religious character, which gradually make its way into the foreground before emerging with striking power at the work’s climax.