Lorraine Hetschel

At the height of her art, the composer and jazz pianist Lorraine Desmarais offers a new work that celebrates the estuary of St. Lawrence River, connecting the Great Lakes to the North Atlantic Ocean. Reminiscences of landscapes surveyed and loved, of people met and appreciated feed the movements of the music suite with pictorial accents. Requisitioning the full potential of the piano, an instrument that is at once melodic, harmonic, and percussive, Lorraine Desmarais paints a fresco with an extensive palette, sometimes figurative, sometimes abstract.

We can readily imagine with what modest pride the 40-year-old Bach presented his second wife Anna Magdalena with this most delightful of all domestic scrapbooks. Bach himself started it off for her with two of the keyboard Partitas (A minor, BWV827 and E minor, BWV930) which later formed part of the collection published as the composer's Op. 1 in 1731. Thereafter it was up to Anna Magdalena herself to choose and to enter little compositions which made particular appeal. Not all the music by any means is by her husband and there are pieces for example by Couperin, Bohm, Stolzel, Hasse and her stepson Carl Philipp Emanuel as well as several by anonymous composers.

If you think you've heard Handel's "Ombra mai fu" (known as his "Largo") so often, and in so many different arrangements, and sung by so many different voices, that you can no longer be moved or surprised by it, think again. This CD of Handel arias, mostly from his Theodora or the cantata La Lucrezia, ends with "Ombra mai fu," and as sung by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, it is so tender, so beautiful, so impeccably shaded, that you'll think you're hearing it for the first time. But that's only four of this disc's 67 minutes–-a follow-up to Hunt Lieberson's extraordinarily successful CD of Bach cantatas. There's not a dull or disinterested moment to be heard anywhere. As the violated Lucrezia, Hunt Lieberson alternately rages against the man who raped her and turns her grief inward; the former is terrifying in its intensity, the latter makes us almost feel as if we're eavesdropping.

Written by a contemporary of Mozart, these are wonderfully pleasing pieces.Some of the movements such as the last movement of the B-flat major concerto and the middle movement of the G major concerto are outstanding. The performance is very good and McAslan, the violinist, is outstanding (clean and expressive).

Lorraine Geller recorded this album for the Dot label in Los Angeles in 1954, but it was not released until 1959 - a year after her passing. She was alto saxophonist Herb Geller's wife, and this is one of the few albums that she recorded as a leader. You can hear echoes of Dodo Marmarosa, Al Haig and Bud Powell in her playing, but for the most part her sound is her own. There is a definite bebop vibe, but a lot of power as well in her playing. On this album she is backed by Leroy Vinnegar on bass and Eldridge "Bruz" Freeman on drums.

Charpentier’s Médée is one of the glories of the Baroque. Medea’s betrayal by Jason, her comprehensive revenge and the plight of those caught up in this epic tragedy prompted Charpentier to compose music of devastating power. Transcending the constraints of the Lullian tragédie lyrique, he produced characterisations of astonishing complexity and invested vast stretches of music with a dramatic pace and a harmonic richness rivalled among contemporaries only by Purcell. The electrifying exchanges of the third act, mingling pathos with extreme violence, alone put Charpentier on the same imaginative level as Rameau and Berlioz. The machinations of the fourth act and the dénouement in the fifth maintain the same captivating impetus.

The International Forum for Young Composers was conceived and established by the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne. A biennial event, Forum was launched in 1991, organized in collaboration with the Faculty of Music of the University of Montreal as well as the Société Radio-Canada, and sponsored by the International Music Council (UNESCO). Forum’s Montreal roots notwithstanding, we responded enthusiastically to the kind invitation from the Telstra Adelaide Festival to ‘relocate’ the 2000 event to Australia. In 2002, Forum returned to the University of Montreal for its sixth edition.

R&B singer Lorraine Ellison had exactly three entries in the R&B charts, but she was far more prolific than that would indicate. In addition to two 1965 Mercury singles, she recorded 48 sides and three albums for Warner Bros. Records between 1966 and 1973. With an incredible vocal power, range, and intensity that was perhaps too heavy for the record-buying masses, Ellison never made it big, except of course in the hearts of committed soul fans-and the occasional rock and pop buyer.

Lorraine Klaasen - Nouvelle Journee (2016) {Justin Time JUST256-2 rec 2015}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 281 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 97 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 25 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2016 Justin Time Records | JUST256-2
World / Worl Jazz / International / African Traditions / Southern African

South Africa native Lorraine Klaasen learned how to perform on the world’s stages by tagging along with her mother Thandie Klaasen, a highly respected jazz singer. This allowed Klaasen to launch her career at an early age, and after successfully touring Europe, she decided to settle in Montreal. Since then, she’s been involved in musical theatre, won a JUNO award, and released three albums. On her latest project, Nouvelle Journйe, she pays homage to her homeland by singing in the many languages of South Africa—specifically Tsonga, Sotho, isiZulu, Xhosa, English, and French—and by creating her own form of Township music.