Sacred Songs

Savina Yannatou's fourth ECM album is a dazzling evocation of her band's hometown, plunging deep into its rich and complex history. Once known colloquially as the Jerusalem of the Balkans, Thessaloniki has been home to a host of cultures, religions and ethnic communities. Greeks, Jews, Turks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Armenians, Slav-Macedonians and Pontiac Greeks have shared the city's diverse life. Yannatou gives all of them a voice, even casting an Irish song about Salonika into this multi-lingual programme in which she shines as a unique interpreter and spokeswoman for the city's ghosts. As ever, Primavera en Salonico are a delight, one of the most resourceful bands of any idiom, as they negotiate the inspired - and very varied - arrangements of Kostas Vomvolos.

The school of G.I. Gurdjieff “In the beginning it was a vibration… or, if you prefer, the Word”. Who is Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, and what is the nature of the message he conveyed?

Shawn Hennessey’s project, Leana Song, is a fusion of Afro-Cuban Orisha songs with electronic, folk and jazz. This second volume, “Orisha Love Song Vol.2 - ‘Oru Cantado Électrique’ presents new arrangements of 19 traditional Orisha songs, with Batá drums at the center. The arrangements are electro-folkloric, and draw influences from samba, house, trap, and experimental.

Rossini Hayward, one of the most creative guitarists of his generation, has written a sequence of Christmas carol arrangements that range across the centuries and over continents.

Taking its name from Mozart's famous sacred aria, Et incarnatus est, Made Human showcases Emily White's astonishing ability to make the trombone sound like the human voice.

Established in 1952, the Munich Radio Orchestra has developed into a body engaged in a wide spectrum of musical activity. There have been gala concerts and opera concert performances in particular, under the direction of Marcello Viotti, as well as a Paradisi Gloria series devoted to the sacred music of the 20th century, concerts for children and young people, and theme evenings.

The infallible Gesualdo Six trademarks of consummate musicianship and scholarly integrity are much in evidence here. Queen of Hearts addresses and reflects on queens spiritual (the Virgin Mary) and temporal (Mary Tudor and Anne Boleyn, among others) in a programme of music largely of the sixteenth century, but spiced with two short works from the twenty-first.

Decca Records has announced the global signing of Franciscan Friar Alessandro Brustenghi, from the original friary founded by Saint Francis of Assisi: the Porziuncola in Assisi. This marks the first time in music history that a Friar has landed a major record deal. Alessandro was discovered by the legendary Mike Hedges (U2, The Cure, Manic Street Preachers), while in Italy. The album is a masterful blend of traditional and modern sacred songs, including an original track by Royal Wedding composer Paul Mealor.

60! France’s most famous tenor celebrates not only his sixtieth birthday, but also forty years of an exceptionally rich and varied, and remarkably generous career.