Susanna Elevation

First single from Norwegian artist Susanna’s upcoming album ‘Go Dig My Grave’ feat. Giovanna Pessi, Ida Hidle & Tuva Syvertsen. ‘Go Dig My Grave’ is a unique project between Susanna, Swiss baroque harp player Giovanna Pessi, accordion player Ida Hidleand fiddle player & folk singer Tuva Syvertsen. The quartet have reworked ten eclectic songs from seemingly disparate worlds and brought them together on this album of sympathetic and beautiful interpretations. They lend their talents to traditional English and American folk songs, numbers by Purcell, Elizabeth Cotten, Joy Division and Lou Reed, as well a new composition by Susanna written to a poem from Charles Baudelaire’s once banned ‘Flowers of Evil’.

Highly acclaimed Norwegian singer/songwriter Susanna announces her 19th album in her 20th year as a recording artist. Meditations on Love reflects the complexities and difficulties of maintaining love. So many songs celebrate the giddy joy of a new connection or lick the wounds from a break-up, but Susanna explores what happens in between, examining the work required by a healthy relationship and contemplating the conditions that turn love into something toxic. Susannaʼs mastery of balladry is well documented, but on Meditations on Love, she introduces a rhythmic presence new to her work. The result is one of Susannaʼs strongest and most dynamic recordings of her career.

Limited box containing four CDs in card wallets housed inside a clamshell box. Susanna Hoffs, a founding member of The Bangles and co-conspirator Matthew Sweet released three full volumes of their Under The Covers series between 2006 and 2013, on which the two teamed up to pay homage to many of the singles (and album deep cuts) from the '60s, '70s, and '80s which informed and shaped their own musical destinies. The Beatles, Dylan, Fairport Convention, Neil Young, The Beach Boys, The Who, Grateful Dead, Fleetwood Mac, Carly Simon, The Ramones, The Clash, The Pretenders, The Smiths and Prince are amongst the 57 acts covered. With guest appearances from Lindsey Buckingham, Steve Howe, Van Dyke Parks and Dhani Harrison, this 60 song package contains all three albums and fifteen previously-hard-to-get bonus tracks plus a 48 page booklet with annotation by Sweet and Hoffs, all gathered together for the first time.

I've got it all, from rock to classical, and this rates as one of my favorite CD's. It's one of those very rare pieces where you can just put it in the player and let the whole thing run. It's wonderfully well-written and Susanna's voice, well it just gives me chills. This is not like Bangles rock, this is more alternative music. My favorite songs are…well…ALL OF THEM! Falling and Eyes of my baby are stunning. And yes, the bonus tracks of To Sir with Love and Stuck in the Middle just plain rock! I've managed to get several friends hooked on this as well, one of the perils of hanging around me. I love it, I play it over and over all the time.

Paul Hindemith composed Sancta Susanna as part of a trilogy, which also included Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen and Das Nusch-Nuschi. These two works premiered in 1921, but Sancta Susanna was not performed because of its obscene content. A few years later, Hindemith decided to withdraw it because he now thought that it was too shocking.

After two albums in the Susanna & the Magical Orchestra partnership, Susanna Wallumrod steps out on her own, along with some collaborators, with her unusually titled debut. Saying that Susanna is a newer generation's Stina Nordenstam does both artists a disservice — they each have distinctly different styles and approaches — but besides a shared nationality both have a strong, clear vision of their own path to pursue, and Sonata Mix Dwarf Cosmos makes Susanna's path all that much more entrancing.

Calling In Search of Susanna an auto/biography is at once accurate and ambiguous. "Susanna" is three different persons brought together from a European past and an American present. Susanna Simmerl Youngblut is the ancestor who, having birthed an "illegitimate" daughter in her native Luxembourg village, emigrated in 1857 to Iowa. This book is in part her biography.