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.

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.”

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.

Songs in the Key of Life was Stevie Wonder's longest, most ambitious collection of songs, a two-LP (plus accompanying EP) set that – just as the title promised – touched on nearly every issue under the sun, and did it all with ambitious (even for him), wide-ranging arrangements and some of the best performances of Wonder's career…

A good concert by Richard Sinclair and Caravan of Dreams, recorded in Genova, Italy in 1993 with a stunning and satisfying audio quality. A pleasant mix of Caravan, Hatfield and the North, Matching Mole classics and then new songs by Richard Sinclair. Originally released by Mellow Records, now rare.

Since Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba had appeared together in concert frequently in the early '60s, customers spying an LP called An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba might reasonably have assumed that the record would contain a joint live performance by the two, and that might help explain why this album charted in the Top 100 despite its challenging material. To begin with, it is not a live album, but rather a studio recording. And it isn't so much a duo album, for the most part, as a joint album; Belafonte and Makeba perform together on only two tracks, "Train Song" and "Cannon." Otherwise, they split up the selections, each appearing on five.

If there’s any period in modern Springsteen history that continues to grow in admiration it is the 2007-2008 Magic era.