Since the release of 2015’s Love Songs for Robots, Montreal art-rock savant Patrick Watson has endured all manner of hardships—the death of his mother, the end of a long-term relationship, the departure of drummer Robbie Kuster, and the loss of a friend to suicide. They’re the sort of life-altering events that can’t help but filter down into an artist’s work. But while the title of his eponymous band’s sixth album, Wave, references the emotional tsunami he was forced to navigate, Watson refused to let grief be his guiding principle. “I just wanted to make a really simple and beautiful record—a little bit like Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden,” Watson tells Apple Music. That focus yields some of the most elegant, lyrically direct songwriting of Watson’s career, as he deftly threads Lennon-esque melodies and lean acoustic/piano arrangements with orchestration. But Wave’s spare canvas also leaves Watson with enough space to indulge his love of off-kilter experimentation—as he explains, making a low-volume record is not necessarily the same thing as making a low-key one.
How much do you like Leonard Bernstein? Carnegie Hall is betting you like him a lot as it has collaborated with Sony to prepare this 10-CD set, The Original Jacket Collection: Bernstein Conducts Bernstein. It contains every album Bernstein made of his own music for CBS Records, beginning with his 1950 recording of the Symphony No. 2, "The Age of Anxiety" – predating his tenure with the New York Philharmonic by nearly a decade – to the ballet Dybbuk in 1974, recorded with the New York City Ballet Orchestra several years after his departure.
One More Story (1988) is the third solo album for music artist Peter Cetera and his second album after leaving the group Chicago. This album includes the hit "One Good Woman". It also includes the single "Best Of Times". The album was produced by Patrick Leonard, and contains an appearance by his most famous artist at the time…
Moved by the warm response to 2016’s You Want It Darker, released three weeks before his death, Leonard Cohen left his son with instructions to finish those songs they’d started together, using vocal recordings he was leaving behind. In an act of devotion—to his father, to song—Adam wrote and recorded arrangements for each, as he thought Leonard would have wanted to hear them. The result is Thanks for the Dance, a posthumous album of unreleased material that’s as loving and respectful as they come. “This was not meant to be about me,” Adam tells Apple Music. “I didn’t make choices that were a reflection of my taste—the exercise was to try to make choices that were a reflection of his. It’s this advantage that I have over much greater and more accomplished producers: They don’t know what he hates. I do.” Here, he tells us the story behind each track and highlights some of his favorite lines.
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) was not only a brilliant conductor – having served with the New York Philharmonic for several decades beginning in 1943 – but was also recognized as one of the 20th century's most lauded composers. In that respect, few if any have contributed as significantly to classical music in the context of the American experience. It could likewise be contended that his contributions to the Broadway stage solidified the formerly intransigent chasm existing between symphonic and popular music. In honor of what would have been Bernstein's 85th birthday, Sony Music created a pair of mid-priced sets celebrating the maestro's accomplishments. A Total Embrace: The Composer (2003) offers more than three and a half hours of highlights spanning nearly a quarter-century.