Pro Cantione Antiqua The Essential Gregorian Chant (1994)

Don’t forget Early Music Day on March 21st! We will celebrate this year with digital premieres of two beautiful albums. Ars Britannica is a superb journey through English music from Dunstable to Dowland by vocal ensemble Pro Cantione Antiqua. Various pieces are excerpted from the Old Hall Manuscript, our main source of English sacred music of the late 14th-century. They are coupled with a florilegium of Elizabethan a cappella madrigals, and songs accompanied by the voluble lute of Christopher Wilson.

The word Renaissance, meaning rebirth, is applied to the era that spans the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries, an era characterized by a cultural awakening, the world breaking free from the Dark Ages, looking brightly to the future. Originally used in the art world, “renaissance” has since been applied to all endeavours of mankind. For us, 1450 to 1600 is considered to be the Musical Renaissance; an era that witnessed the invention of movable type, Columbus’ voyage to the New World and Martin Luther presenting his 95 Theses, driving a wedge into The Church and rendering unto the good Renaissance folk a new world order.

Clocking in at 75 minutes, this single-CD release is probably as much Rare Earth as most casual fans want (even though it only contains nine songs), and as a mid-priced item it's doubly attractive…

The Essential 72-93 is a makeshift best-of, piecing together some of Klaus Schulze's most alluring and interesting electronic offerings. With 14 tracks from over ten albums, this compilation is a generous retrospection into this former Tangerine Dream member's material. Many of his masterpieces are included on this double CD, like the swirling electronic breeze of "Wahnfried 1883" from 1975's Timewind, or the out-of-body atmospheric waves of "Floating" from Moondawn. Also breathtaking is the ten minute synthesized soup of "Ludwig II Von Bayern" off of the monumental X album, and the chilling glaze of "Freeze," a superb example of keyboard artistry as Schulze precipitates an icy climate from basic tonal applications…

Fearlessly searching for new conceptions of sound and not caring where he found them, Garbarek joined hands with the classical early-music movement, improvising around the four male voices of the Hilliard Ensemble. Now here was a radical idea guaranteed to infuriate both hardcore jazz buffs and the even more pristine more-authentic-than-thou folk in early music circles. Yet this unlikely fusion works stunningly well - and even more hearteningly, went over the heads of the purists and became a hit album at a time (1994) when Gregorian chants were a hot item. Chants, early polyphonic music, and Renaissance motets by composers like Morales and Dufay form the basic material, bringing forth a cool yet moving spirituality in Garbarek's work…

He may not be a household name, but die-hard blues fans know Little Milton as a superb all-around electric bluesman – a soulful singer, an evocative guitarist, an accomplished songwriter, and a skillful bandleader. He's often compared to the legendary B.B. King – as well as Bobby "Blue" Bland – for the way his signature style combines soul, blues, and R&B, a mixture that helped make him one of the biggest-selling bluesmen of the '60s (even if he's not as well-remembered as King). As time progressed, his music grew more and more orchestrated, with strings and horns galore. He maintained a steadily active recording career all the way from his 1953 debut on Sam Phillips' legendary Sun label, with his stunning longevity including notable stints at Chess (where he found his greatest commercial success), Stax, and Malaco.