Let There be Cello

2CELLOS return this autumn with an all-new album, Let There Be Cello, set for release October 19. A follow-up to the 2017 release of Score, Let There Be Cello finds Stjepan and Luka exploring a diverse catalogue with their signature boundary-breaking playing style.

Overlapping textures and soft, shifting timbres are the most recognizable features of Morton Feldman's music, and his attractive sonorities draw listeners in ways other avant-garde sound structures may not. This music's appeal is also attributable to its gentle ambience, a static, meditative style that Feldman pioneered long before trance music became commonplace. The three works on this disc are among Feldman's richest creations, yet the material in each piece is subtly layered and integrated so well that many details will escape detection on first hearing. In Piano and Orchestra, the piano is treated as one texture among many, receding to the background and blending with muted brass and woodwinds in a wash of colors. Cello and Orchestra might seem like a conventional concerto movement, especially since the cellist is centrally placed on this recording and plays with a rather lyrical tone. However, Feldman's orchestral clusters are dense and interlocked, which suggests that the cello should be less prominent and blend more into the mass of sounds behind it. No such ambiguity exists in the performance of Coptic Light, which Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony Orchestra play with even dynamics and careful attention to the work's aggregate effect, which is mesmerizing.

Much of Bach's music is abstract enough that it can easily be arranged for new instrumental combinations, and often was by the composer himself. The music for unaccompanied violin and for unaccompanied cello forms an exceptional case; the sonatas and partitas for solo violin were part of a long tradition of virtuoso violin music to which Bach was making a conscious contribution, and the six suites for solo cello were written as extensions of the ideas in the violin pieces. Transferring the cello suites to a solo recorder, which is incapable of executing many details of the cello scores, is thus something Bach probably wouldn't have countenanced. ..

A 50 CD Original Jackets Collection celebrating the greatest Classical and early romantic recordings from Decca’s pioneering early music label L’Oiseau-Lyre. The box features orchestral, vocal, chamber and solo piano music from Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music, Malcolm Binns, Andras Schiff, the Music Party, the Esterhazy Quartet among others.

Charlie Parker Records: The Complete Collection, Vol. 13 - Allen Keller + Kevin Gavin (2012 CP Records 233193/13 rec 1962}
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© 1962, 2012 Charlie Parker Records / Membran Media / Documents | 233193 / 13
Jazz / Cool / Vocal Jazz / Swing / Mainstream Jazz

Exhaustive 30 CD collection from the Jazz legend's short-lived label. Contains 44 original albums (421 tracks) plus booklet. Every record-collector has run across an album with the little sax-playing bird in it's label-logo, right next to the brand name Charlie Parker Records or CP Parker Records. Turning the sleeve over, especially if it was one of the non-Parker releases, and seeing a '60s release date under the header Stereo-pact! Was as exciting an experience as it was confusing. Was the claim Bird Lives meant more literally than previously thought?

Gerry Mulligan - Mosaic Select 21: 1957-1958 (2006) {3CD Set Mosaic Records MS-021}
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© 1957-58, 2006 Mosaic Records / EMI | MS-021 | 24-bit remaster by Ron McMaster
Jazz / Cool / West Coast Jazz / Saxophone

Gerry Mulligan was certainly busy in December 1957. During a two-week period, the baritonist recorded a reunion album with trumpeter Chet Baker, documented a set of his songs with an octet that featured five top saxophonists, recorded a very obscure set with a sextet that included four strings, and cut most of an album in which his quartet teamed up with singer Annie Ross. This limited-edition three-CD set contains all of the music plus alternate takes and the last part of the Ross album, which was recorded nine months later with trumpeter Art Farmer in Baker's spot. The reunion with Baker, one of only two times when Mulligan and the trumpeter got back together (the other was a 1970s concert), has some of the old magic of the famous 1951-1952 pianoless quartet.