Late Orla Gartland

Hannah Williams is back with a new album and a new band but the trademark powerful, throaty vocals are there on ‘Late Nights & Heartbreak’ as are the tough funk grooves, this time produced by Heliocentrics wizard Malcom Catto. The sanctified feel of ‘Tame In The Water’ has Aretha/Marlena tones while the punchy, infectious ‘Fighting Your Shadow’ is a strong dancer. ‘Woman Got Soul’ has an afro feel in the horns, ‘Still In My Head’ is a big, drama filled epic – another big dancefloor number – while ‘Fool’ is a lush slice of soul with a blues edge. ‘Another Sunrise’ again touches on Southern Soul, the down tempo foot tapper ‘Your Luck Can Change’ is an impassioned, dark-edged epic while the instrumental ‘7am To Seville’ allows the band to forefront their playing with Catto indulging in some great, far-out production work. Great album.

A programme which bridges Debussy’s first work for piano (the Danse bohémienne, from 1880) and his last (Les soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon, from 1917). Steven Osborne is equally responsive to the very different musical moods of both.

Pink Floyd have surprised fans with the release of a dozen live albums documenting some of their gigs from the early ’70s. The 18 LPs were added to streaming services this week with no prior announcement, spanning the 1973 year.

It’s genuine blues with some early, but melancholy ZZ-Top, spinning off to a down-sized version of Pontus main band Bonafide, and with the most of the blues in between! It’s simple sweet blues in real good way! And Pontus voice is so damn good through out the album!…

Igor Levit makes his debut on Sony in the last six piano sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven, a part of the repertoire that is usually reserved for mature artists, not rising stars. Yet in spite of some signs of youthful enthusiasm, and a possible loss of objectivity from playing these pieces on a busy recital schedule, Levit has a good feeling for Beethoven's late style, and his 2013 release is a promising beginning for his recording career. The excessive use of rubato is something Levit should watch, because too much alteration of the tempo dissipates Beethoven's energy, and even though these sonatas have their moments of reverie and trance-like passages that can be interpreted as mystical experiences, too much elasticity can make them seem like idle daydreams, or worse, forgetfulness.

Featuring a collection of 18 recordings and storied collaborations with some of his favorite female musicians, the new album stands as a testament to the generation and genre-spanning brilliance that has defined Kweskin's illustrious career for the past six decades. Throughout the album, recorded almost completely in one or two takes, Kweskin showcases the captivating, boundless essence of his artistry alongside guests such as Maria Muldaur, who first worked with Kweskin in the 1960s as part of Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band. Other special appearances include Samoa Wilson and Meredith Axelrod, who have released LPs with Kweskin throughout the years, while Rose Guerin and Juli Crockett have been frequent performers at his concerts on both the East and West coasts. Fiona Kweskin, his granddaughter, also lends her vocals to several tracks such as the album’s latest single and music video, “You’re Just In Love.”

Giovanni Battista Sammartini (1700 or 1701 – 15 January 1775) was an Italian composer, organist, choirmaster and teacher. He counted Gluck among his students, and was highly regarded by younger composers including Johann Christian Bach. It has also been noted that many stylizations in Joseph Haydn's compositions are similar to those of Sammartini, although Haydn denied any such influence. Sammartini is especially associated with the formation of the concert symphony through both the shift from a brief opera-overture style and the introduction of a new seriousness and use of thematic development that prefigure Haydn and Mozart. Some of his works are described as galant, a style associated with Enlightenment ideals, while "the prevailing impression left by Sammartini's work… [is that] he contributed greatly to the development of a Classical style that achieved its moment of greatest clarity precisely when his long, active life was approaching its end"