Songs From Evening Land

Per Nørgård (b. 1932) is regarded by many as Denmark's greatest living composer, with some of his music being hard edged and difficult to approach. This music on this disc will not suit everyone, it is quite difficult to understand where the composer is going at times, and in the case of the "Plutonian Ode", which is for soprano and solo cello, I found little to like, perhaps it is because the first two sections are for recitation, but I found it just grates with me! This is not to say that there isn't anything to like here, on the contrary, the disc opens with his "Two Recitatives Op. 16" which sets texts by the Swedish poet, playwright and novelist, Pär Fabian Lagerkvist.

Throughout his career, saxophonist Najee has generally performed crossover music that mixes R&B, jazz, and pop. This particular date is one of his strongest and most jazz-oriented, a well-conceived tribute to Stevie Wonder. Najee (heard on soprano, flute, alto, and tenor) plays instrumental versions of the music from Wonder's famous Songs From the Key of Life album, plus several other notable Wonder songs. Assisted by such players as keyboardists George Duke, Ronnie Foster, and Herbie Hancock; guitarist Phil Upchurch; and a top-notch horn section, Najee creates fresh renditions of 21 Stevie Wonder tunes.

Outstanding tenor and recent Juilliard School graduate Kyle Bielfield has lost no time in making quite a name for himself in the realms of opera and art song alike. In this, his debut recording, he offers a carefully chosen assortment of outstanding American art songs by the finest domestic composers – to include Amy Beach, Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Samuel Barber, John Duke, Ned Rorem, Mark Abel and others. He further blesses us with classic examples of nostalgia-ridden vocal Americana by Stephen Foster, Aaron Copland, Irving Berlin and Leonard Bernstein. All texts are also by American writers and poets. The title theme derives from the album’s three winning settings of former American Poet Laureate Robert Frost’s signature poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

In a second disc of Ives’s songs, the unbeatable partnership of Finley and Drake again enthral their listeners and bring them to the emotional core of each work. The range of style and approach in Ives’s text-setting is startling—from simple, sentimental ballads to complex and strenuous philosophical discourses, sometimes encompassing the most dissonant and virtuosic piano parts, sometimes with the accompaniment pared down to an almost minimalist phrase-repetition. Even those composed in a superficially conventional or ‘polite’ tonal idiom usually contain harmonic, rhythmic or accentual surprises somewhere.

A comprehensive anthology of music from the mythic first leg of Bob Dylan’s groundbreaking Rolling Thunder Revue, this 14CD box set includes all five of Dylan’s full sets from that tour that were professionally recorded. The collection also provides the listener with an intimate insider’s seat for recently unearthed rehearsals at New York’s S.I.R. studios and the Seacrest Motel in Falmouth, MA plus a bonus disc showcasing one-of-a-kind performances from the tour.

An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba is a Grammy Award-winning 1965 album by Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba. It was the second outcome of the long lasting collaboration between Belafonte and Makeba, the first being the appearance of Makeba in the song Just One More Dance on Belafonte's 1960 album, Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall.

Despite the title, just two of the tracks in this album are actually duets, while all the others are either sang by Belafonte or Makeba alone.

In the mid 1960s, Belafonte was very active in supporting emerging African artists as well as making African music known worldwide, and this album is an example of this activity. It includes classical African songs like Malaika (with the english title My Angel) as well as songs in African languages such as Zulu, Sotho and Swahili. –Wikipedia

A limited guitar player at best, and with a voice that hardly spans a couple of octaves, Leonard Cohen has nonetheless fashioned a legacy of gorgeously realized songs that reach deep into the heart of lust, ill- and well-fated romance, hope, and redemption, and if he doesn't sing like an angel, he could certainly mesmerize one with the melody, lilt, and power of his songs…

A one-night-only concert was held at New York City’s Town Hall last fall, to celebrate the music of the Coen brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis. The evening was filmed for a documentary that was broadcast by Showtime last winter, and now Nonesuch Records releases a live recording of the concert, Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of “Inside Llewyn Davis,” on January 13, 2015. The concert, documentary, and live album were produced by Inside Llewyn Davis writer/director/producers Joel and Ethan Coen and soundtrack producer T Bone Burnett. (Nonesuch also released the film’s soundtrack.) The concert poster included with the first 200 Nonesuch Store pre-orders are no longer available.