Midwest Augustana

Although often overshadowed by his better-known Italian contemporary Claudio Monteverdi, as well as his successor in Lutheran music J.S. Bach, Heinrich Schutz's contributions to 17th-century sacred music were nevertheless significant. With a career that spanned an era of great musical developments, his sacred compositions reveal a rich array of influences and were to prove inspirational to future generations of composers. This 19-disc box set is the result of four volumes of recordings made by Cappella Augustana and Matteo Messori for Brilliant Classics between 2003 and 2010, collected together for the first time.

Norwegian trumpeter Mathias Eick opts for a different approach on Midwest. Four years after the song-like Skala, his sophomore ECM date that has attained "classic" status in European critical circles, he employs notions of history, folk tradition, and dislocation. This album was inspired by Eick's time spent playing the American continent; his tour began on the West Coast. When he entered the rural, upper Midwest and encountered its vast open spaces, he began to feel a sense of "home." He later learned that over the past two centuries of immigration, over a million Norwegians had settled there. After conceiving a "road" album that would begin in Hem, the village of his birth, and traverse the ocean to America, Eick enlisted violinist Gjermund Larsen (a folk musician who has contributed to Christian Wallumrød's ECM recordings), pianist Jon Balke, double bassist Mats Eilertsen, and percussionist Helge Norbakken. The compositions are all lyrical, in typical Eick fashion, but with Larsen they take on a rougher, more earthen quality.

Margo Price - Midwest Farmer's Daughter (2016) {Third Man Records TMR 339}
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© 2016 Third Man Records | TMR 339
Country / Americana / Neo-Traditionalist Country / Contemporary Country

Midwest Farmer's Daughter isn't merely an autobiographical title for the retro country singer/songwriter Margo Price, it's a nice tip of the hat to one of her primary inspirations, Loretta Lynn. The connections between the two country singers don't end there. Toward the end of her career, the Coal Miner's Daughter wound up collaborating with Jack White for 2004's Van Lear Rose, and White's Third Man Records provides a launching pad for Price, releasing her self-financed solo debut as-is as Midwest Farmer's Daughter.