Song of Achellis

Formed in 2008, AGENTS OF MERCY was originally a side-project by Roine Stolt (guitars, bass, vocals) of The Flower Kings fame, whrere the goal was to create a low key, mostly acoustic based type of music…

This release offers a pair of fairly early Delius works; they may not be instantly appealing to those making a start with this idiosyncratic English impressionist, but confirmed fans will love them. The roots of Frederick Delius’ Appalachia lay in his experiences as an orange plantation manager in Florida in the late 1880s, where he heard the singing of African-American laborers and, according to his own testimony, first began to think about becoming a composer. The work is subtitled “Variations on an Old Slave Song with Final Chorus for baritone, chorus, and orchestra,” and everything about it is intriguingly confused. Florida is not part of Appalachia. Nor is the Mississippi River delta, which Delius claimed was the inspiration for the work, but which he apparently never saw.

A transcendent collection of cuts snipped from a bumper 5CD set of unheard Basho material recorded between 1965 and 1985. American Primitive guitar / Fahey / Takoma / Six Organs of Admittance fans pay attention.

“Our countries have moved further apart. Most people are so immersed in their own life experience that they don’t even try to understand the culture of other societies … but by comparing these two works people can see the double picture – how Europeans feel about love, pleasure, and death, and how the Chinese feel about the same things.” Long Yu. Centuries-old Chinese poetry is brought vividly to life in a new recording from Long Yu and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. Their second album for Deutsche Grammophon, The Song of the Earth, is set for international release on 13 August 2021. The world premiere recording of the contemporary The Song of the Earth by Ye Xiaogang is presented alongside Gustav Mahler’s classic symphony. Ye’s ambitious new work expresses the grandeur and beauty of the original Tang Dynasty poems that Mahler set in German translation, fusing a contemporary style with centuries’ worth of traditions from both east and west. Long Yu, who commissioned Ye’s work, conducts the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra in this fascinating meeting of histories and cultures.

Waxman is best known as a writer of film music, like Korngold. He was also a fine composer, again like Korngold, and in his threnody in memory of child holocaust victims, he composed a masterpiece. This work is roughly comparable in subject matter with Survivor from Warsaw, or the War Requiem, but is more accessible than the former and more sincere than the latter sounds (or so it seems to me). This is one of those odd masterpieces that should be well known but isn't. The recording is clear and immediate.

Freddie Hubbard - Sing Me a Song Of Songmy (1971) {Atlantic Masters 81227-3669-2 rel 2003}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 223 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 98 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 164 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1971, 2003 Atlantic Masters / Warner | 81227-3669-2
Jazz / Post Bop / Electroacoustic Music / Trumpet

After having been out of print for nearly thirty years, this classic mindblower from 1971 has at last been reissued on CD. This is much more than a 'jazz' recording by Freddie Hubbard. Quoting the original album cover, what we have here is SING ME A SONG OF SONGMY, "A Fantasy for Electromagnetic Tape, featuring Freddie Hubbard and his Quintet, with Reciters, Chorus, String Orchestra, Hammond Organ, Synthesized & Processed Sounds,Composed & Realized by ILHAN MIMAROGLU on Poems by Fazil Husnu Daglarca & Other Texts". What the CD reissue liner notes fail to emphasize is that this is really an Ilhan Mimaroglu album. Not to devalue the first-rate performances by Hubbard & his group, but calling this a Freddie Hubbard album is somewhat misleading.