Play Their Hearts Out

In-demand Chicago bassist Ethan Philion — praised by bass legend Rufus Reid for his “wonderful internal pulse,” and by The Washington Post for his “well-honed chops and astounding musicality” — has long looked to Charles Mingus as a towering role model. Mingus’ highly physical bass technique, his up-front communicative style as a bandleader, his interest in blending composition and improvisation, his pursuit of a unified voice in both small and large group settings, and not least of all his uncompromising antiracist politics and the way they manifest throughout his oeuvre: these qualities continue to inspire Philion and so many others in the decades following Mingus’ untimely death from ALS in 1979, at age 56.

The stellar young Capuçon brothers seem incapable of setting a foot wrong on disc and they put their considerable chamber-music experience to great use in Brahms's final orchestral work, with cellist Gautier Capuçon proving an eloquent lead in the vehement first movement.

Since founding L'Arpeggiata in 2000 as an early music ensemble, Christina Pluhar has taken it in some directions not usually associated with the rarified world of historically informed performance practice, particularly into the traditions of Southern European folk music and jazz. In Los Pájaros Perdidos: The South American Project, she ventures even further afield into the world of modern Latin American popular song and folk song. She argues persuasively that the Renaissance and Baroque instruments the Spanish introduced to the New World in the 16th and 17th century remained essentially the same, while back in Europe they developed in entirely new directions so that the difference between the sound of an early music ensemble and a popular South American instrumental group is less significant than one might expect.