Reise or Know How or City

Not a bad compilation - 13 songs cut by Bull City Red over a four-year stretch, which include gospel-tinged songs as well as country blues in the Blind Boy Fuller mode. The sound is reasonably good throughout, given the rarity of some of the records, and the analog-to-digital transfer fairly clean given the age of the source material - Red's guitar comes through in startling clarity, and surface noise is generally held in check, or at least to manageable levels. Among the highlights here is Red's version of "I Saw the Light," and which, in another form, entered the repertory of Hank Williams, among others…

The City of Tomorrow releases Blow, a collection of three works for wind quintet, anchored by the premiere of a multi-movement work written for them by Hannah Lash. Guided by their virtuosity and commitment to polished interpretation, the album is an exploration of finely crafted compositions that take advantage of the rich colors of the instrumentation in all of its permutations.

Talk about forgotten composers! Marcos Portugal (1762-1830) composed some 50 operas, all of which have disappeared. This present one was premiered in 1797 in Venice but the version recorded is one that was reassembled for Lisbon in 1804. Shorn of what I can only assume were the quasi-endless recitatives that were in style at that time in farces, what we get is 69 minutes of delightful music that makes you want to hear more of this Portuguese composer. Rossini might've been pleased with the plot about two women, one a Countess and the other a peddler, who have their identities switched by a playful magician/pilgrim and who wind up better for it (and their husbands) when all is set right.