The second album from alto saxophonist Remy Le Boeuf's big band Assembly of Shadows, 2021's Architecture of Storms is an enveloping production showcasing his kinetic improvisation and deeply textured compositional skills. The album is the follow-up to the group's Grammy-nominated 2019 eponymous debut and once again displays their progressive, cross-pollinated approach to modern creative jazz.
Édouard Lassen never stopped composing. His copious oeuvre contains examples of almost every genre in favour in the second half of the 19th century, from piano pieces to operas, choral works, symphonic and concertante pieces. His international reputation was secured especially by his theatrical works. He also produced a regular and uninterrupted flow of over 260 songs from 1857 until his death in 1904. The small-scale song form was ideally suited to his temperament imbued with universalism, assuming a dual cultural heritage.
Brad Mehldau’s Variations on a Melancholy Theme will be released June 11, 2021, on Nonesuch Records. The recording features the pianist/composer and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which commissioned this orchestral version of the work, which comprises a theme and eleven variations plus a cadenza and postlude; the album also includes an encore, “Variations ‘X’ and ‘Y.’” You can watch a video with excerpts from the piece below. (Mehldau originally composed Variations on a Melancholy Theme for pianist Kirill Gerstein.) Mehldau and Orpheus toured Europe, Russia, and the US with the piece, including a 2013 performance at Carnegie Hall. Speaking to the combination of classical form with jazz harmonies in the work’s musical language, Mehldau wrote, “I imagine it as if Brahms woke up one day and had the blues.”
If the name of György Cziffra remains unswervingly associated with Liszt, Frédéric Chopin’s music was the pianist’s true love from his very childhood. Cziffra’s mastery and sensitivity works wonders, either in the waltzes, the impromptus, the études or the first piano concerto conducted by his son, all gathered in this superb collection.
Marina Baranova knows a thing or two about conjuring fantastical worlds. Since her childhood when she’d sit with her fairy tale books open in front of the piano translating the pictures she saw into sound worlds up to her last album, where she envisioned a darker side to Debussy, the Ukrainian composer and pianist’s imagination has always played an active role in the music she plays. For her latest release, 'Atlas of Imaginary Places', she lets it run the show. For it, Baranova worked with the Danish visual artist Christian Gundtoft and Ukrainian writer Volodymyr Kompaniets to conceive more than just an album. “I wanted to create this alternative listening experience,” she explains, “Don’t underestimate the power of imagination, now more than ever, it’s important to remember we have this treasure within us.”