Michael Later

SOMM RECORDINGS is pleased to announce the return of pianist Michael Dussek to explore the music of his ancestor Jan Ladislav Dussek and its relationship to one of the piano repertoire’s most illustrious champions, Fryderyk Chopin.

When lesbian detective Abigail Marks teams up with gay guy Michael Dalmar to solve the disappearance of his twin, Kyle Dalmar, a famed portrait photographer, their investigation leads them into the Kyle's risque world. With Michael posing as Kyle, the pair uncover assistants who have designs on their bosses, clients who have an interest in detectives, and killers who want them stopped. Navigating between identity and duplicity, Abigail and Michael discover that photos never lie, and two minutes can mean the difference between life and death.

With their flair and brilliance, the Six Preludes justifiably became regarded as among Lennox Berkeley’s finest piano works. They originated in a BBC commission for short pieces that could be performed as interludes between programmes (the BBC later dropped this idea). Berkeley intended the pieces to be playable by skilled amateurs and while two proved more difficult than he had envisaged, none requires a virtuoso pianist.
Berkeley’s natural adroitness at developing thematic material is nowhere demonstrated better than in the Sonata, his most significant …

Agricola was praised by his contemporaries for the bizarre turn of his inspiration, and his music likened to quicksilver. By the standards of the period this is a highly unusual turn of phrase, but remains spot-on. The Ferrara Ensemble anthology, the first ever devoted to the composer, focused on the secular music, both instrumental and vocal, precisely the area covered by Michael Posch and Ensemble Unicorn in this most satisfying disc. Where there's duplication (surprisingly little, in fact) the performances compare with those of the Ferrara Ensemble, although the style of singing is very different. The voices are more up front and less inflected, perhaps the better to match the high instruments with which they're sometimes doubled. But the tensile quality of Agricola's lines comes through none the less, as does the miraculous inventiveness and charm of his music. Further, much of what's new to the catalogue really is indispensible, for example Agricola's most famous song, Allez, regretz. Unicorn keeps its improvisations and excursions to a minimum, and the music is the better for it. It really is a must-have.

Michael McDonald's 2003 album of Motown covers, modestly titled Motown, was his biggest hit in well over a decade, so it only made sense that he returned with a sequel to the record a little over a year later — after all, might as well strike while the iron is hot. Logically titled Motown Two, the album follows the same blueprint as the first record, offering highly polished, professionally produced, expertly performed interpretations of gems from the Motown vaults; it's the sound of young America in the '60s reinterpreted for the adults of the new millennium. While the sound is the same, there are a couple of important differences this time around. First of all, there are a few celebrity cameos, a sign that this project has a higher profile than the first Motown record….