Lucas Berlanza

With gallant style and romantic virtuosity, this album illustrates the exceptional technical brilliance of the flute in late classical chamber music.

Detroit musician Ted Lucas spent decades quietly pursuing musical greatness in and around his hometown. Throughout the '60s and '70s, Lucas' name was attached to several regional rock bands, session work for Motown before they left Detroit for Los Angeles, and even time spent studying the art of raga with Ravi Shankar. He continued playing up until his death in 1992, leaving behind only scattered documentation of his various output, the most lasting and visible article being this self-titled album from 1975, first released by Lucas himself on his OM Records imprint. Recorded largely in his attic apartment, the album is divided into a first side of six spare tunes of soft psychedelic folk and a second side with two instrumentals and a wandering blues jam…

Gary Lucas – charmingly oddball pop songwriter, musical world traveler, utterly hellacious guitarist – is perhaps at his most hellaciously, charmingly cosmopolitan on this frankly amazing album, which finds him adapting popular Chinese songs that were originally recorded in the 1960s and which he heard and fell in love with during a sojourn in Taiwan in the mid-'70s. His girlfriend at the time had a cassette tape of such local superstars as Chow Hsuan and Bai Kwong, and it was, he says in his liner notes, "like almost no other music I had ever heard before." Twenty-five years later he put together this quirkily gorgeous tribute, which includes jaw-droppingly virtuosic fingerstyle guitar arrangements ("Mad World," "Wall") and song settings using guest vocalists. Among the best of the latter are the limpidly beautiful "Night in Shanghai" (again, note the guitar playing) and the country-flavored "I Wait for Your Return," which is simply a hoot. He's not playing this stuff for laughs, though; his genuine affection for the music comes through loud and clear, and even when he has fun with it he is obviously trying to do so in a way that brings its haunting loveliness to the fore. Very highly recommended.

West Coast vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter Robert Lucas forged a path for himself in the blues world after the release of his much-hailed 1990 self-produced debut cassette, Across the River. Based in Long Beach, CA, as a solo artist Lucas recorded for the Audioquest label out of San Clemente. He was also a member of the legendary boogie blues band Canned Heat, singing and playing bottleneck guitar and harmonica with the group off and on starting in 1994. Lucas paid homage to traditional blues but also carefully crafted his own singing and slide guitar style. These talents are on ample display on his Audioquest albums, including Luke and the Locomotives, Usin' Man Blues, Built for Comfort, Layaway, and Completely Blue, all released during the '90s, as well as latter-day Canned Heat albums on the Ruf and Fuel 2000 labels.

The seventh album by Lucas and Arthur Jussen at Deutsche Grammophon presents music for two pianos by Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Arensky. 'It's like driving a few BMWs', remarked conductor Michael Schønwandt after conducting Dutch brothers Lucas (26) and Arthur Jussen (22). Despite their young age, they have been part of the international concert world for years and are praised by both the press and the public. Not only did their albums have received platinum and gold status, they won several Edison Klassiesek Audience Awards, among others. With the album, the long-planned project to record an album with a beautiful, powerful and technically demanding Russian repertoire is now coming true.

"Scarlatti" is the new album from the internationally renowned pianist Lucas Debargue. This stunning new album features 52 beautiful sonatas by Scarlatti—often considered ne of the most influential composers of the Baroque era. Debargue started taking piano lessons at the age of 11. At the 2015 International Tchaikovsky Competition , Debargue was awarded the coveted Moscow Music Critic’s Prize. Debargue has performed at numerous prestigious music venues including the Royal Festival Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Berlin Philharmonic hall , Carnegie Hall and the Concertgebouw. Debargue has won many awards including the highly regarded Echo Klassik award in 2017.

Legendary soul singer Nona Hendryx (Labelle) teams up with original Beefheart guitarist on 2017 tribute album studio album that spans the entire length and breadth of Captain Beefheart's groundbreaking catalog, from "Safe as Milk" through "Trout Mask Replica" and beyond.