My Great Predecessors

Iiro Rantala is a jazz chameleon who loves to appear in many guises. The Finnish pianist invariably springs a surprise with the concepts for his albums, particularly those of his solo piano projects. For "My Finnish Calendar", he has turned a new page: this is improvised music but with an extra-musical narrative: from a very personal and Finnish point of view, he has set to music the passing of a complete year in his home country, and he has done it with his typical mixture of melodic inventiveness, melancholy and humour. His well-known technical finesse and mastery, acquired over the years, have been applied here with an unerring instinct for bringing the essential to the fore.

Roger Muraro - Liszt: Le Piano de Demain (2015) {La Dolce Volta}
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© 2015 La Dolce Volta | LDV20
Classical / Piano / Sonata

'I waited a long time before listening to interpretations of the Sonata in B minor by my great predecessors, the masters of the art – all so different. For I very quickly made the Sonata my story, so caught up was I in the event I was living through. This sonata can be all things to all people, according to the inspiration, the character, the mood of the performer; it can follow the instant, the fleeting sentiment, or be straight-backed and noble! Every interpretation is different, yet they all remain the Liszt Sonata.'

Following the tour for Rid of Me, Polly Harvey parted ways with Robert Ellis and Stephen Vaughn, leaving her free to expand her music from the bluesy punk that dominated PJ Harvey's first two albums. It also left her free to experiment with her style of songwriting…

Back in 1994 when Nils Landgren started up his Funk Unit, there were those who asked whether there was actually any need for Swedish funk. After seventeen years, ten albums and several hundreds of concerts, the question has basically answered itself: to find the most fired-up take on this music anywhere, a sound which is inextricably welded into soul, rhythm and blues and jazz, and in which all of the instruments – and the vocals too – have an irresistible rhythmic urgency about them, this is definitely the band to see and hear. And if one turns to the pioneers, godfathers and grandees of the funk world – Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley, the musical prime movers behind James Brown, Ray Parker Jr., or Joe Sample from the Crusaders – then there’s no need to look any further: each and every one of them has played with the Funk Unit.